


I'll be coming for you anyway

by annelesbonny



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: (that means there's orpheus/eurydice shenanigans), Alice & Julia & Eliot get some shit done, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fix-It, Gen, I genuinely do not know how else to describe this fic, M/M, Road Trips, acknowledgment of character's canon suicidal ideation, and Underworld shenanigans, and so much more! - Freeform, greek mythology inspired
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-20
Updated: 2019-05-16
Packaged: 2020-01-16 18:14:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 24,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18526936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annelesbonny/pseuds/annelesbonny
Summary: After Q dies, the gang shatters in some pretty spectacular ways. Alice leaves without a word and somehow finds herself on a fucked up road trip with the former Dean Fogg. Julia is left to clean up the pieces of the life her best friend left behind and also maybe fights a god. And Eliot gives up magic, may or may not be drinking to die, and gets adopted by a stray that follows him home.So it goes. Until Quentin starts popping up in reflective surfaces. Magic comes from pain, but pain comes from love. And these three? They’ve leveled up, motherfuckers.





	1. Three Short Stories About Heartbreak

**Author's Note:**

> So the finale which shall not be named happened, I hit up a depressive episode HARD, and then started writing this like a goddamn maniac. I haven't done a multi-chaptered fic in years, but the narrative demanded it, and I, unlike some writers who will also not be named, like to give the narrative what she demands. Writing this so far has been cathartic and difficult and so much fucking fun so I hope you enjoy this story that I like to believe gets to exist in some timeline, somewhere, at some point. 
> 
> Credit where credit is due in the end notes of each chapter.

 

* * *

 I. Alice Quinn vs. The Great American Road Trip 

* * *

 

 

 

 

> _“didn’t the night end, wasn’t the earth_
> 
> _safe when it was planted_
> 
>  
> 
> _didn’t we plant the seeds,_
> 
> _weren’t we necessary to the earth,_
> 
>  
> 
> _the vines, were they harvested?”_

 

The fire spits sparks up towards the stars, making Alice think of dying lampreys and the cold, comforting oblivion of being a niffin, and it’s enough to send her staggering to her feet. The rest of them are watching her, silent now except for Eliot who hasn’t stopped mumbling to himself since his last note ended, in a choked off sob. She wants to hate him, for being alive when Quentin isn’t, for being the one thing Quentin refused to give up on….for being so fucking heartbroken that it physically hurts to look at him. Which is exactly why she can’t, and never will, hate him.

But what she can do is leave, which is exactly what she does. She picks herself up and walks away. Walks away from the fire and into the darkness, until her mind is blank enough for her to realize what she needs to do next.

She steals a car. Well, the nice man at the sketchy dealership thinks that she handed over an abhorrent amount of cash for a red 2009 Dodge Journey, but by the time the bills turn back into monopoly money she will be long gone. It’s been awhile since she’s driven for any length of time, but she hears it's just like riding a bike. Which, incidentally, she also hasn’t done in awhile. Alice decides to save her overthinking for another time.

Instead, she’s going to focus on the open road because that sounds like something a normal person dealing with something normal like, say, soul-consuming grief and guilt would do so she picks a direction and starts driving. She takes back roads and side streets until she finds her way onto I-78 W.

Driving on the interstate is strange. It’s always made Alice feel like she’s been split in two, one part of her watching the road, making her hands move to change lanes or switch the radio station and foot to press down on the brakes or the accelerator while the other part of her sinks into herself, goes to that strange, quiet place in her head that only seems to exist when faced with endless miles and only the other cars and the same seven Top 40 songs for company. She hasn’t done anything like this since she was an undergrad and Charlie had dragged her out to “see the world”. They’d driven to Chicago, sneaking out of the house before sunrise like teenagers, lugging a never-been-used cooler full of capri sun and bacon sandwiches.

That was the summer before Charlie left for Brakebills.

Alice turns the radio up.

 

As it turns out, the pile of monopoly money she left with the car salesman might actually be worth more than this shitty car with its even shittier gas mileage. Alice pulls into a Chevron, starts the pump, and stomps into the attached mini mart to buy a fucking Capri Sun and something bacon flavored.

When she returns to the car, the nozzle has been returned to the pump, her gas is paid for, and Dean Fogg is sitting in the passenger seat. She almost drops the maple-glazed bacon jerky she’s holding. She approaches the driver’s side carefully  and pulls the handle; its open. After a beat, she slides into her seat, shoves her drink and her snack into the cup holders next to her and starts the car.

“You know,” she says slowly. “If I’d known you were going to be here, I would have at least cracked a window for you.”

He glances at her, then goes back to staring out over the dashboard. “Your offer, though insincere, is appreciated. Now, Alice, where are we off to next?”

Alice blinks.

“I’m sorry, Dean Fogg, but what— .”

“Former Dean, actually, Alice. I’ve found myself taking a rather unplanned...sabbatical.”

“Oh my God, they actually fired you.”

Fogg sighs.

“Not quite, but close enough, it seems for the board request that I get some distance, for the time being. Luckily, news of this road trip of yours reached me just in time and I thought I’d join.”

And that, apparently, is all the explanation Alice is going to get right now as Fogg settles back in his seat, settles a pair of sunglasses on his nose, and pulls a flask out of his vest.

Alice takes a deep breath and unclenches the death grip she has on the steering wheel. She puts the car in reverse.

“Fine. But you’re paying for the gas.” She balls up her receipt and throws it in his lap.

 

* * *

 II. Julia Wicker Thinks Her Thoughts (And Breaks Some Shit)

* * *

 

 

 

 

> _“Summer after summer has ended,_
> 
> _balm after violence:_
> 
> _it does me no good_
> 
> _to be good to me now;_
> 
> _violence has changed me._
> 
>  
> 
> _Daybreak. The low hills shine_
> 
> _ochre and fire, even the fields shine._
> 
> _I know what I see; sun that could be_
> 
> _the August sun, returning_
> 
> _everything that was taken away —_
> 
>  
> 
> _You hear this voice? This is my mind’s voice;_
> 
> _you can’t touch my body now._
> 
> _It has changed once, it has hardened,_
> 
> _don’t ask it to respond again.”_
> 
>  

The first time Q showed Julia a magic trick, they were eight years old and the card got stuck in his hair. She remembers giggling, pulling it out for him, and practicing with him until he got it right. Later, they fall asleep under the table, drawing their map of Fillory together.

Fuck Fillory. And fuck Brakebills and fuck magic and fuck every last fucking god in the multiverse because Q is dead and it's their fault. Brakebills and Fillory, gods and magic; she’d trade it all for him, alive and safe and next to her again.

But she can’t. And all she’s left with is her grief and her anger and nowhere to put either of them down. So, she wishes her spine into steel and walks back into the Cottage. It’s empty, for the most part, but she knows Eliot is here somewhere which means Margo is as well. Julia isn’t avoiding them, exactly. Just like all of them aren’t avoiding each other, exactly. But losing Q shattered them, and now they’re like debris, the aftermath of an explosion, floating through space, directionless but away from each other.

And Julia, who is barely holding herself together, doesn’t have the strength left to do it for them as well. So they drift. Alice is already gone, barely even waiting for Q’s memorial to be over before bolting off into the night. It isn’t fair, being upset with her, but it’s easier than being upset with Eliot, who she remembers, pale and trembling and feverish after the five hours of non-magical surgery he’d endured, begging deliriously for Q until the drugs finally pulled him back under.

Since then, he’s stopped making eye contact with anyone other than Margo. She wants to help him. Even though she is very much not a goddess anymore, she feels his pain, feels all of their pain. After all, she’s still fucking _human_.

And that, she supposes as she makes her way up the stairs, is a big part of her problem. She’s human and she’s hurting and everyone else is just going to have to look after themselves from now on. The goddess has left the building. She almost smiles, imagining how Q would have groaned at her bad joke and accompanying eyebrow waggle.

She turns the corner, and Eliot is standing, well, more like leaning, in the hallway between her and what used to Q’s room here. She knows he didn’t have much here, but the thought of someone else touching his things, throwing them in a box or a dumpster, made her physically ill so she’s forced herself to collect what she can. Eliot, though, has gotten there first. He’s holding a t-shirt, black and soft-looking and very Q, clenched in one, white-knuckled and shaking fist; his other hand braced against the wall, barely holding him upright.

“I’m taking this,” he says, his voice rough and almost unrecognizable, and pulls the shirt to his chest, in a gesture that is somehow both child-like and possessive.

“Yeah. Yeah, of course.” Julia takes a step down the hall and Eliot pushes closer to the hall. He’s a tall man, formidable in his own way, and seeing him like this, shrinking in on himself, is unexpectedly painful.

She takes a few more steps, passing him, before something makes her hesitate.

“Eliot, if you want— .”

“ _No_.” It’s a harsh, guttural sound, barely even a word. “I can’t. Julia, please.” His voice breaks, and Julia closes her eyes.

“Yeah, okay,” she says softly. “I got this.”

She turns away so she doesn’t have to watch his slow, painful progression down the stairs.

 

Everything Q had left at the Cottage fits into a single box, and Julia can’t figure out if that makes her want to laugh or cry so she does both. Then, she calls Penny and he takes her and her one box back to Kady’s apartment.

Penny asks if she wants him to stay and she almost says yes. But she doesn’t because she knows already that this is going to be so much worse than the Cottage. This is the place where Q had actually lived recently. It’s where he fought and planned, snatched moments of sleep and ate a lot less than she would have liked. There are remnants of him everywhere, the little spaces he carved out for himself: the last book he’d been reading, an obscure text about gods and monsters, propped open on the coffee table, the hideous yellow throw that was too small for him, but that he curled up under without fail every time it was within reach, the cereal he’d left out on the counter.

Julia stares at the book, the throw, the cereal, and her heart pounds in her ears.

_This isn’t over._

_Yes, it is._

She should have known. She should have never let him out her sight after that, forced him to talk, to her, to anyone. She should have hugged him more, and longer. She should have told him she loved him, everyday. There is so much she should have done, and now there’s nothing she can.

Julia can feel the magic humming beneath her skin, scuttling like ants along her veins, and for a second, she wants nothing more to let go, to unleash everything she has left inside her and burn it all to the ground. Brakebills and Fillory and gods and magic. Herself.  

Instead, she runs and throws up in the sink. After an upsetting amount of dry-heaving, she straightens up and wipes her mouth. She ties her hair back. _Don’t cock out now, Wicker._ She touches the top of the cereal box almost reverently.

“Well, this is awkward.”

Julia spins around, snatching up a kitchen knife as she does. There’s a man standing in the middle of the living room. He’s tall, well-dressed, and handsome. She tightens her grip on the knife.

“Who the fuck are you?”

The man holds up his hands, and smiles.

“Ah yes. No, I suppose we haven’t been properly introduced yet, have we? I’m Hades.  I do believe you’ve met my wife?”

 

* * *

III. Eliot Waugh and the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Day

* * *

 

 

 

 

> _“It does me no good; violence has changed me._
> 
> _My body has grown cold like the stripped fields;_
> 
> _now there is only my mind, cautious and wary,_
> 
> _with the sense it is being tested._
> 
>  
> 
> _Tell me this is the future,_
> 
> _I won’t believe you._
> 
> _Tell me I’m living,_
> 
> _I won’t believe you.”_
> 
>  

Eliot finds an apartment in Manhattan, replaces his entire wardrobe, and buys three sets of Brooklinen Luxe bed sheets because he doesn’t have anything better to do. Margo insists that everyone, including him, has their own way of coping, but he’s calling bullshit because this isn’t coping. This barely qualifies as living. He’s going through the motions, meeting all his cues and reciting his lines, but it's all a facsimile, and a pretty poor one at that.

But he has his body back. Every movement he makes is his own: he walks where he wants to and his hands hold what he chooses. The thing is, his mind and his heart haven’t quite caught up to the fact that what he wants to walk to and who he wants to hold isn’t here anymore.

Eliot doesn’t want to think about Q, but the truth is that who Eliot is now is so wrapped up in who Quentin was that not thinking about him isn’t really possible anymore. So, he thinks about him every day. He thinks about how he’d feel about Eliot’s new apartment, if he’d like the soft leather chair-and-a-half in front of the fireplace that Eliot hasn’t been able to sit in once because it’s the perfect size for two people already used to living in each other’s pockets to curl up in together, nor has he used the fireplace because the thought of fire now makes the taste of burning peaches rise in the back of his throat like bile.

There’s a bar two blocks from his building called The Talking Bear, which, in addition to a name that made him smile for the first time in what felt like months, also has a hideous, animatronic bear head just inside the entrance that greets guests. Eliot likes occasionally enchanting it to say increasingly terrible come-ons until someone runs out from behind the bar to beat it into submission with a cooking utensil. He spends a lot of time there getting spectacularly drunk. Eliot used to be utterly fantastic at being drunk, just the right mix of loud and charming. Now though, he fears he’s become rather maudlin, but he’s way beyond caring about that. The alcohol makes his thoughts go hazy, and if he chases that feeling long enough, it almost feels like he’s back in the happy place, safe from the memories that haunt him most.

(Waking up in the hospital and seeing Julia and Margo, arms wrapped around each other so tightly he can’t tell which one of them is shaking harder. He knows it then, before either of them have to tell them, before they have to say the words and speak the truth into existence because there is only one person in the world who could ever bring his Bambi and Julia Wicker together like that.)

(The time he opens his eyes in the middle of the night to see Margo, strong, beautiful, unbroken Margo, bent over the tiny sink in Eliot’s hospital room, full body sobbing into her hands. He wants to call out to her, to say her name and offer her the comfort she herself has been trying so hard to give him, but he lets his  own pain overwhelm him instead and unconsciousness overtakes him again.)

Eliot finishes his whiskey and stands, gesturing for the bartender to close him out. Predictably, the room tilts slightly before he finds his feet, but Eliot is a well-practiced and functioning alcoholic, and he manages it with grace. He pays for his drinks and leaves, grateful when the rushing, random beat of the city replaces the warm, rhythmic chatter of the bar’s patrons.

It’s not quite four, but Eliot’s been drinking since noon (he prefers to beat the post nine to five crowd if at all possible) so he starts the two block walk back to his apartment. Before he’s taken more than a couple of steps, he hears something that sounds like a whimper, or maybe a whine, coming from beneath a pile of damp cardboard. Curious, Eliot shoves at the cardboard with the toe of his boot. The cardboard shoves back, and he yelps, stepping back as the ugliest dog he has ever seen shuffles out and tries to bite his ankle. Eliot hisses and moves back again.

“Fucking New Yorkers,” he mutters, and the dog whines and tilts its head. God, but that’s an ugly dog; smallish with matted, dark hair, and only one eye and where the other one should be there’s a nasty looking scab. Oh, and it has three legs and stinks more than a frat boy’s jock strap.

“You’re a mess, my friend,” Eliot tells the dog. The dog barks. Eliot sighs. “Good luck,” he says solemnly and starts walking again.

The dog follows. For fuck’s sake.

As he’s about to cross the street, he notices a little store he hasn’t seen before, which is odd for a couple of reasons: a) he literally walks this route every day and b) the place is called _Gifts from Elysium_ and appears to exclusively sell old, shitty looking mirrors and that is one hundred percent something he would have noticed.

Something makes Eliot hesitate, but then shakes his head and steps off the curb.

Sunlight glints off one of the mirrors in the shop’s window and a flash of something catches his eye. Eliot stops cold, then turns around far too quickly for someone who’s had as much dark liquor to drink as he’s had and is also currently standing in traffic.

Over-long hair and an achingly familiar hoodie. A half second glimpse of wide brown eyes and that soft, frowning mouth.

It was a second, maybe less, but it was him. Quentin. Eliot would know him anywhere, even in an undersized and likely overpriced, 19th century gilded wall mirror in an antiques store in Manhattan. Eliot stands, dazed, in the middle of the crosswalk, heart pounding and his mind spinning with possibilities, potentials, _hope_.

Sharp teeth sink into his shin. Eliot shouts and stumbles forward, out of the way of a cab that flies through the spot he’d just been standing in. Well, shit. He straightens up and looks down at the dog, who sits on his foot and looks very proud of itself.

“Thanks, dog,” he says and goes to buy that hideous mirror.

 

When he finally gets back to his apartment, all he can think about is calling Margo and getting a closer look at the mirror and _Quentin_. He barely even notices when the dog darts inside his apartment before he can get the door closed.

“Jesus fuck. I will deal with you later.” Eliot tries to sound stern, but he’s feeling almost giddy and he doesn’t think it works.  

The dog barks and jumps up on the sofa.

Margo picks up after the second ring.

“Hey, El.” She sounds less tired than the last time they spoke. Which was yesterday.

“Margo, I saw him.”

“What.”

“Q. In a mirror in Midtown. Which I bought, even though it is truly horrendous. Bambi, I need you to— .” Come over here, to find Alice and Julia and everyone, and tell them that this isn’t over. That they never should have given up, that Quentin is out there and needs them and how could they have been so fucking stupid to believe for even a second that Quentin Coldwater would ever be really gone?

“Eliot, stop.” Margo’s tone hits him like a slap in the face. She sounds hard, but tender, like she thinks he’s out of his mind and she’s trying to talk him down. “He’s dead. You know that. Alice and Penny saw— .”

“And I know what _I_ saw, Margo.” It explodes out of him, desperate and angry and _certain_ because he has to be. He _needs_ to be. “It was him and it was just for a second, but I know Q when I fucking see him!”

“You’re _grieving_ !” she yells back, and Eliot clenches his jaw so hard his teeth hurt.  “I know you think you saw him, but that’s not that unusual. You have to process your shit, Eliot. He’s dead, but you _aren’t_ and you can’t keep doing this to yourself. You’re drunk and in pain and I’m trying to fucking help you. You need to talk to someone. Now, Josh told me about— .”

It hurts. Every fucking word that leaves her mouth draws blood and maybe she knows it and maybe she doesn’t it, but she just gave him an opening and something dark flares to life inside of him. A low, derisive snort escapes him. He hears Margo take a sharp breath.

“You have something to say?” She asks tightly.  

This is the moment when Eliot should back down, let her get it out of her system, and then cajole her into doing things his way anyway, but he doesn’t. Or he can’t. Because his best friend is supposed to believe him, and support him, but she isn’t and it hurts. Eliot is so fucking tired of being hurt.

“Oh no, please, if _Josh_ says, then by all means.” He pours every ounce of bitchy, condescension into his voice that he can.

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Her voice is stone cold now. He’s surprised there isn’t frost forming on his phone.

“It means I don’t give a flying _fuck_ about what Josh has to say, and honestly, I don’t get why you _do_. He isn’t—.”

And there it is. The moment he goes too far.

“Goddamn you, Eliot, _he was our friend, too_!” Her voice cracks like a whip, like glass breaking. “You don’t get a fucking monopoly on missing him.”

Laughter bubbles up his throat like vomit. Miss him? No, Eliot doesn’t _miss_ Q; he fucking _aches_ for him. It is so much more than simple missing. It’s knowing what fifty years could feel like, of holding a lifetime in his hands and watching it turn to smoke. It’s waking up in a world that has the gall to take Quentin from him. _Before_ him. It’s knowing that this isn’t how they were supposed to end, while Margo doesn’t because Eliot never told her. Not about the mosaic, or Teddy, or the life Q let Eliot built with him. It hurt too much then, and now, even thinking about it is pure fucking agony.

None of this is Margo’s fault, but he’s taking it out on her anyways.

“Really, Margo? Because you won’t even say his _name!_ It’s Quentin, remember? Quentin Coldwater. We both fucked him once.” He needs to stop, he knows he needs to stop, but he’s always been so goddamn good at breaking things and he wants someone, anyone, even Margo, to hurt more than he is.  “But he always liked it when you called him Q. Made him feel like you actually gave a shit about him.”

Margo’s breath catches harshly, and he waits for her to come at him, to wound him all the ways only she can, to draw blood and lick it from her teeth. Anything, _anything_ to make him feel a different pain then the one he’s been drowning since he woke up.

But she doesn’t do any of those things. Instead, she lets her breath out in a long, shuddering sigh.

“Fuck you, Eliot.”

And she hangs up on him.

Eliot takes his own shaky breath and looks at the dog, who stares up at him with big, sad eyes.

“I think that went well.”

If he cries later, there’s no one but a weird, ugly dog and a shitty mirror to see anyways.

 


	2. Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alice dreams and Fogg abandons a recent hypothesis. Julia fights a god. Eliot talks to Margo, a mirror, and a dog, but not in that order.

* * *

 I. Alice

* * *

 

 

 

> _“You remember too much,_
> 
> _my mother said to me recently._
> 
> _Why hold onto all that? And I said,_
> 
> _Where can I put it down?”_

 

She’s been driving for almost twelve hours when she sees Quentin in the rear view mirror. She screams, jerking the steering wheel so hard the car veers off the road, and through the grassy shoulder. She slams the brakes moments before they crash into a tree.

Fogg is saying something to her, voice raised, but she barely hears him, already reaching for the mirror with shaking hands. Her fingers move through a revelation spell before she even realizes she’s doing it, but it shows nothing. There’s nothing.

But Quentin. She saw him. He was there. For one, stupid second he was _right there_ . Logically, rationally, obviously, she knows that it wasn’t really him, that Q is dead and the combination of exhaustion and grief are starting to get to her. But. He was _right there_.

She doesn’t even notice that she’s crying until the tears start dripping from her chin.

“Alice?” Fogg’s voice, quieter now and as close to concerned as she’s ever heard, breaks through and she wipes at her eyes.

“I’m fine. Sorry, I just thought I saw….” She trails off. There really isn’t anything to say.

“Ah.” Fogg clears his throat. “I see. If you don’t mind, I think it would be best if I drove for awhile as I am not currently grieving a past love and fueled only by adrenaline and,” he pokes at a crinkled wrapper she left on the dashboard. “And ‘bacon-flavored veggie straws’. Dear God.”

She does not appreciate his tone, but Alice is too tired to put up much of a fight. Maybe she does need to rest, just for a little while until she can keep her eyes open and not hallucinate her dead ex-boyfriend in a car mirror. So she switches with Fogg, curls up in the passenger seat, and closes her eyes.

Alice dreams.

At first, its her family, the one she was born into. _Mommy, love me, love me. I won’t be real unless you love me._ She dreams about Charlie, and her parents; she even dreams about fucking Carol. It should have been a perfect life; it wasn’t.

The scene shifts and the characters change. Now it’s Brakebills, and Quentin; Fillory, and Margo and Eliot; the Library and Sheila and Kady.

She dreams that she didn’t push Q away. She dreams that they were friends first, and stayed friends after. She dreams that she didn’t shut down Margo’s fumbling attempts at friendship, Eliot’s outstretched hand. She dreams that she was there for Sheila, that she was better and stronger and better at being stronger.

Finally, she dreams about these last few months. Of Quentin reaching for her again and Alice letting him. Even though she knew better. She still knows better, even now, after everything. She loves Q, and she always will. He was her first love; she just wishes they had been better at being friends after. Unbidden, Eliot comes to mind. Because apparently, he can sleep with Quentin and manage the friends part after. She doesn’t want to think about that anymore though. It hurts in a way she’s not ready to face yet, especially not in her dreams.

Instead, she dreams about Quentin and their second chance. How badly she wanted it, how desperate he was. She saw he was drowning and knew she could be a lifeline. Maybe not the one he really wanted, but the one he had.

That, she hates herself for. Because she’s better than that, they both are, and in the harsh light of hindsight, it's so painfully, obviously clear that they were fighting for the wrong thing. In her dreams, she watches herself try to force the jagged, bloody puzzle pieces of her old life, her old love, back together again and again. It doesn’t work. It was never going to work, and maybe she would have figured that out eventually, maybe Q would have too, and they would have found a different way to be happy.

She never imagined in her wildest dreams that they wouldn’t have the time. They were supposed to have time, to be young and stupid, to make mistakes and try again. To be better. To be real.

It isn’t fair, and it never will be, but this is not the first time she has squared off against “not fair” and it won’t be the last. But perhaps, at the end of this road, she’ll find peace and a place to put everything down.

Alice stops dreaming. She sleeps.  And then, she wakes up.

She sits up slowly, wiping the sleep from her eyes. The sun is setting, and if Fogg was driving anywhere even close to the speed limit they should be somewhere near Arkansas. She still doesn’t know where she’s going, but it doesn’t seem to matter as much anymore. She’ll find her way. She has time.

Then, she turns and looks out the driver’s side window to figure out where Fogg’s gotten to. Instead, she sees Quentin, trapped in the reflective metal surface of the gas pump. Alice lunges across the center console, scrambling into the driver’s seat and throwing the door open, reaching for Quentin. He disappears just as her fingers touch cold, oily metal.

“No,” she breathes.

“Well.” Fogg stands in front of the car, holding two styrofoam cups of coffee, looks away from the gas pump and at Alice.” There goes my burgeoning hypothesis about the hallucinogenic side effects of processed vegetable straws.”

 

* * *

II. Julia

* * *

 

 

 

> _“Why does tragedy exist?_
> 
> _Because you are full of rage._
> 
> _Why are you full of rage?_
> 
> _Because you are full of grief.”_

 

The god of the Underworld is in the living room. Right. Because this is the kind of shit that happens to her, over and over and fucking over again. Julia takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly.

“Right,” she says. “Hades. Of course.”

Hades frowns. “You and your friends have such an….odd way of greeting deities. Humans are usually so much more….deferential.”

Julia puts down the kitchen knife; her hands are shaking too much to hold on to it anyways. She walks around the counter, doesn’t stop until she’s in front of Hades. He’s not as tall as he seems to think he is.

“Hm, yeah, we have this thing about respect being something you earn that we can’t quite shake. You all have such a….fun way of reacting to that.” Her voice is steady. She steadfastly refuses to think about the friends he would have had reason to greet lately.

Should she be openly mocking a god? Probably not, but Julia is so fucking tired of chasing after the elusive concept of what she _should_ be, especially since she is so rarely the one who decides what that is. This god should be grateful she doesn’t just punch him in the face à la Kady.

“What do you know of earning respect? You rejected godliness twice,” he says dismissively, and something inside of Julia starts to burn. “Anyways, this conversation is beside the point. I’m only here to make you an offer. Now—.”

“Yeah, I’m going to stop you there because if the next words out of your godly mouth aren’t some convoluted but ultimately doable way of getting Q back from wherever the fuck you’ve shoved him in the Underworld then I’m going to punch it.”

Hades pauses, brow furrowing. “Q? Oh yes, the little one hell-bent on his own self-destruction. Uh, no, but I’m sure he’ll be much happier wherever he is now. Such deep sadness in life really translates very well in the afterlife.”

He looks at her expectantly, pleased with himself.

Julia punches him in the mouth.

Whatever Hades was expecting, it sure as shit wasn’t that because he stumbles back half a step and raises a hand to his lip.

“Ow. That actually _hurt_ a little.”

She can’t pinpoint exactly what it is about that last sentence that does her in, but the burning inside of her rages into an inferno and she _snaps_ , launching herself at the god of the dead and striking at every part of him she can reach.

“That _hurts a little_ ?” She screams, slamming her elbow into Hades’ nose, then ramming her knee into the meat of his thigh. “I want it to hurt a lot. I want it to hurt so much you’d rather be _dead_ than have to feel one more _second_ of agony. You want my deference? I want _my heart back_ , you fucking asshole!”

She goes for his eyes, but his hands snap out and seize her wrists.

“What are you _doing,_ you pathetic, little—.”

“ _Enough._ ”

A voice thunders through Julia’s mind, knocking her off her feet. She braces herself on her hands and knees as the living room bleeds into white. Her head pounds as the voice echoes, but she notices with some satisfaction that Hades is also on his knees.

“I did not bring the two of you together so that you could fight like children.”

Julia raises her head.

“ _Our Lady Underground_?”

“ _Persephone_?”

She and Hades speak at the same time, then glance at each other. Hades stands slowly, while Julia sits back on her heels.

Whatever she calls herself, the monster’s sister killed her, using Julia’s body, but somehow, she stands before them, wreathed in soft, golden light.

“How?” Julia asks.

Persephone smiles at her, a little sad, a little proud.

“It’s very difficult to kill a god,” she says. “But unfortunately, a being begotten by the gods will do the trick.”

“You never came home,” Hades says, his voice tight, on the edge of breaking. Julia almost feels sorry for him. “I thought, perhaps….”

“It was never my home as much as it was yours, dear,” she tells him gently. “And I _am_ dead, very much so, I’m afraid. But I also have one last gift left to give. To you, Julia, if you want it.”

“No offense, but the last gift I got from you was pretty fucked up,” Julia says, but her mind races ahead. What if….

Persephone sighs, and something like regret clouds her expression.

“I know. And I—I am sorry for the part I played in your pain and it’s continuation. But what I offer now is different, and is your choice entirely. Because you have had far, far too many choices taken from you.”

“Took you long enough to figure that out.” Bitterness creeps into her voice. “What could you possibly offer me?” _Now_ , she wants to add, _what can you offer me_ now _, after I’ve given so much, had so much taken away? What is the_ point _anymore?”_

“Myself. I offer you the last of myself, the remnants of godly essence that allows me to speak with you now. My final spark of power. I give it to you freely, with no conditions, no tests. Just a choice.”

“I would be a goddess again?”

“Not entirely. But you also won’t be human either, not entirely. You, Julia Wicker, will be utterly unique.”

Julia stands, takes a step towards Persephone, then hesitates.

“What about Q? Is there any—.”

Persephone holds up her hand and Julia finds herself unable to speak further. She really fucking hates gods right now.  Persephone turns her attention to Hades, who stares at her with the kind of longing that only exists after years of regret. Or, perhaps in their case, millenia.

“You made me a promise, once. A very, very long time ago, we stood together under a peach tree and you promised me something. I’m calling it in.”

Hades exhales sharply, his eyes widening in surprise, then suspicion. His expression settles into a resigned, almost-love. 

“For them? I don’t understand.”

“You have been among the dead for so long, my dear. There is so much you have forgotten.” For a moment, she looks so impossibly, incredibly sad that tears spring to Julia’s eyes. “But it doesn’t matter. You don’t need to understand. You’ll know when the time comes and you’ll remember your promise.”

Persephone looks back at Julia.

“Are you ready?”

Julia nods, raises her chin, and finds that she can speak again.

“Yes,” she says. “I choose this.”

Light flares, white and gold and luminous, until it's all she can see, hear, taste, touch. Everything is light and warm, running through her body like hot coffee at the perfect temperature, like the soft, soothing flicker of a candle, like a summer rain.

Julia opens her eyes, and she’s back in Kady’s living. Unfortunately, so is Hades.

“What did she mean?” Julia demands, as soon as she gets her breath back. “About your promise? What promise?”

Instead of answering, Hades raises one, elegant hand and points at something over her shoulder. She turns, and realizes he wants her to look at the mirror, the long, full body one on the other side of the room.

She sees two things: 1) her eyes are glowing and 2) Quentin, reaching for her.

 

* * *

III. Eliot

* * *

 

_“It is easier to tell a story of how people wound one another than of what binds them together.”_

 

“And that, Not Q, is why every member of the band Creed should be arrested.”

Eliot’s  been talking to hallucination Q for about two days now. He’s been appearing in Eliot’s impulse buy mirror fairly regularly, and if he isn’t going to leave Eliot to his alcoholism in peace, Eliot might as well get something out of this too.

So he talks. He talks about a lot of things he never thought he’d talk about.

“I don’t remember anything the Monster did with my body. I guess that sort of makes sense, given the tiny memory cage I was trapped in. But still. It’s _my_ body. I should know.”

Not Q nods, but he looks frustrated, sitting cross-legged on nothing and staring at Eliot in that stupid, beseeching way of his, the details of which Eliot is honestly impressed his subconscious managed to capture so thoroughly, down to the nervous tick at the corner of his mouth and the way his eyes won’t stay fixed on one part of Eliot’s face for more than a couple of seconds at a time.

“Don’t look at me like that. It’s not fair.” Not Quentin huffs at that, and it's so familiar that Eliot can actually hear that tiny, disapproving sound he secretly adores.

He also says things he’ll never get the chance to say again, not in any way that actually matters.

“I love you. I hope you know that. Well, the you that’s mine. Real Quentin. I love him. Have for so long that it’s honestly a little embarrassing.”

The dog barks, like she agrees. Eliot glares at her.

“Yeah, I didn’t ask you. Also, stop chewing on my shit, dog.”

The dog wags her tail. Eliot knows she’s a she because he took her to a Petsmart, which, it turns out, is not at all like a vet but they were kind enough to take a quick look and confirm for him. And now he has a dog, sort of. Temporarily. He’s feeding her, at least. And she’s judging him for talking to his Not Q mirror hallucination, which is fair.

Later, Penny 23 pops into existence just inside the front door. Eliot blinks. He hasn’t bothered with magical wards, or magical anything actually, post-possession so it’s not so much a surprise that Penny could get into his place as it is that he would _bother_ to. They were never close, beyond moving in the same circles, and fucking up, and occasionally fixing, the same shit, but beyond that all Eliot really knew about Penny, either variation, was in conjunction with his relationships: Kady, the doomed romance, and Quentin, the vaguely homoerotic frenemies thing they had going on. But this Penny has eyes only for Julia, and Q is dead so Eliot’s kind of drawing a blank on what he’s doing here.

Ah, but Penny’s brought a guest. Now he understands. It’s Margo. They haven’t spoken since their explosive phone call two days ago and he’s been trying not to think about it, the vitriol he threw at her, that last break in her voice before she hung up on him.

As if he needed another reason to hate himself.  

“What the fuck, Penny?” Eliot and Margo say at the same time, then glare at each other.

Penny gives them a flat look. He looks bereaved, like an overworked single mom who just needs one goddamn moment with her glass of Chardonnay.

“Deal with your shit, morons.” And in the next second, he’s gone.

Eliot looks at Margo, and it’s like he’s actually _seeing_ her for the first time since Q’s memorial. Eliot’s selfish, always has been. It’s one of the ways he protects himself, the core of the armor around his heart, but the years he’s spent with Quentin and their friends, and his time in Fillory as a ruler, a husband, a father, had been taking their toll recently and cracks started to appear.

There was a moment, after he’d woken up but before he learned about Q, when Eliot thought he was ready. That he could lay down his armor, his selfishness, all the shit he does to himself and everyone around him to avoid being vulnerable, or honest, or _happy_ . That he could fix what he’d broken, that he’d finally, _finally_ learned how to be brave.

But reality burned that dream to ash real fucking quick, and this is where Eliot finds himself. In a mostly empty apartment, talking to a mirror and a stray dog that followed him home, so wrapped up in his own grief and bullshit that he never noticed his best friend shattering beneath her own pain.

“Bambi, I—.” he starts to say, but Margo stops him.

“Shut up, Eliot.” She stalks past him and into the kitchen. “I’ve got shit to say to you, but I’m going to need a drink or four to get through it and so are you.”

She comes back with a bottle of whiskey, sans glasses. Eliot grimaces. It’s going to be one of those talks, then. He tosses back a mouthful and relishes the burn as Margo sits down next to him, a careful six inches between them on the couch. He hates himself a little more for being grateful for the distance.

“I thought that you were dead, El.” Her voice is low and rough, etched with pain. “I accepted it. I went back to Fillory to rule my fucking kingdom because I thought it needed me, and you didn’t anymore. I left him, I left all of them, so I could be somewhere that had something for me to fix.” She refuses to look at him while she speaks, instead stares straight ahead, spine stiff and her nails digging into her knees.

“And I tried, I really fucking did, but you were still dead and it still hurt so goddamn much. But then— then the rabbit got through, and suddenly, you were alive again and it was the best fucking moment of my life. Nothing else mattered to me except saving you. _Nothing_ , Eliot.” Margo looks at him then, just for a second, but the depth of love in her eyes is almost too much for him to bear right now.  “Everything was on the table from that moment on. I would have given anything, anyone, to get you back.” She stops, gathers herself, and when she starts speaking again, her voice is quiet and full of self-loathing.

“And I think that’s why I didn’t see it at first. What it had been like for him. For Quentin.” She swallows, and her eyelids flutter, the first tear slipping out. “Being around that thing that wasn’t you, but looked like you. It was _hell_. And it had a thing for him. Q. It was always touching him; his hair, his face, his back, like a kid that couldn’t keep their hands to their fucking selves. And he just….took it.”

Eliot stands abruptly. He doesn’t want to hear this, but Margo keeps going.

“All I could think about was saving you. I didn’t have the room for anything else. I couldn’t take on his shit and still keep mine together. So I let him bear it alone, and it broke him.”

Eliot wants to rage, he wants to yell and break things, to scream at Margo that she should’ve been there for Q, protected him, talked to him, anything, but he can’t. Because this isn’t her fault. It’s his.

If he hadn’t broken Q’s heart and pushed him away. If he hadn’t shot the monster, but instead found a different way. If he hadn’t gotten himself possessed. If he had been stronger or smarter or anything other than what he was, then this would never have happened. Quentin would be here.

“But that isn’t the worst thing I did. No, that was later. After.” Margo’s voice is thick, ragged with tears and Eliot suddenly, wildly, doesn’t want to hear what she’s going to say next. “For a second, for one stupid second, after Julia told me what happened to Quentin….” She looks up at him then, and as much as he wants to, he can’t look away.  “And all I could think was, ‘thank God it wasn’t you’. Julia’s standing in front of me, crying so hard she’s barely breathing, and I’m grateful it's her best friend that’s dead instead of mine. So if you hate me, Eliot, know that it doesn’t come fucking close to how much I hate myself.”

“I don’t hate you,” Eliot says hollowly, because he doesn’t. Maybe he should, maybe he even wants to, but the truth is if their positions had been reversed, if it had been between Margo and Julia, Eliot would have reacted the same.

“Yeah, well, I’m going to hate me for the both of us. Because I love Q. I love his stupid hair and his nerd bullshit and his constant, exhausting faith in the world being better than it is. I love how much he loved magic. I love his dumb choices and how he never stopped trying to fix them. ” She presses her mouth into a tight line, tears trickle from her eyes down her chin, which she keeps stubbornly raised, even as it trembles. “I love how much he loved you. And I—  I didn’t know how much of my heart he’d taken up until he was gone. And I am _aching_ , Eliot, for something I didn’t even know I had. I would give my other eye, all of my goddamn toes, my fucking life if it meant having him back. Because I love him, and I should have told him that.”

The noise Eliot makes at that is somewhere between a snort and a sob. Yeah, he knows a little about how that feels. ,

Silence falls heavily between them. Then, a large cracking sound rents the air. Margo screams, and points, her hand shaking and her eyes wide. Eliot turns.

His ugly, hallucination mirror is broken. There’s a large crack running the center, splitting the glass in two, jagged pieces. Quentin is on one side, tears running down his cheeks as his mouth shapes words Eliot can’t make out.

“Jesus fuck a goat god, Eliot. Apparently, grief hasn’t knocked out all of your brain cells after all.”

“Thanks, Bambi.”

And the two of them stare, open-mouthed and wondering, until Margo’s phone goes off.

It’s Julia, and what she says changes everything.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aight, so quote round up, all of which come from various Anne Carson works:
> 
> 1\. from Glass, Irony and God  
> 2\. from Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripedes  
> 3\. from Plainwater: Essays & Poetry
> 
> I took some liberties with how I wrote Hades and Persephone, but hopefully it worked out. Also, thank you so much for all your comments; they mean the fucking world to me.


	3. Operation: Sir, That's My Emotional Support Depressed Supernerd

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alice figures some shit out while Julia gets some shit done. 
> 
> Eliot feels his feelings.

* * *

I. Alice

* * *

 

> “love does not look like a person,
> 
> love is our actions,
> 
> love is giving all we can”
> 
>  

Fogg, it turns out, is good to have around when you’re obsessively researching mirror worlds, afterlives, and the clusterfucker-y of god magic while driving more or less aimlessly through the southwestern United States for a couple of reasons. One, he knows a lot about timeline bullshit and the cheating death aspect of it. Two, in every town they pass through he’s been able to locate at least one magician or magician-adjacent person with knowledge or access to old, rare books that might be useful. And three, he makes an excellent get away driver when Alice decides she’s going to need one of those books on a more permanent basis. For his part, Fogg seems content driving, offering his typical, dry, almost-advice, and stealing her bacon cheddar pretzels.

“Why are you helping me?” she asks suddenly and Fogg’s hands jerk on the wheel.

“I mean, there has to be something you should be doing on your...sabbatical, other than this.”

“Not really, no.” Fogg says after a long moment.

Alice frowns, drums her fingers against the spine of the book in her lap, and thinks about the right thing to say.

“Is there something else you _want_ to be doing?”

Fogg chuckles, a deep, genuine sound colored with regret.

“The fact that you would ask me that question and mean it, well, says a lot about your character, Alice. But no. Truthfully, I have nowhere else to be and the one place I would like to be is not currently available to me. So, here I am and here I will stay, until our paths diverge again or you ask me to leave.”

Alice looks back down on her book.

“I’m not going to ask you to leave,” she says quietly, and Fogg smiles.

Some time later, her phone starts vibrating frantically in the cup holder. She answers it without thinking.

“Hello?”

“Yeah, no, this is definitely a video call kind of conversation, Quinn. I’ll wait while you switch over.”

“ _Eliot?_ ” Alice almost drops her phone, scrambling to sit up as she pulls her feet down off the dash and shoves the book between her knees.

She taps the screen and Eliot’s face appears. He looks terrible. His face is pale and drawn with exhaustion, shadows like bruises gather under his eyes, and he hasn’t shaved in at least a couple of days. At the same time though, he looks lighter. As if something monstrous has been lifted from his shoulders and he’s rediscovering movement. Or hope.

“You’ve been seeing him too, haven’t you?”

Alice’s eyes widen. It’s one thing for her and Fogg to see Quentin; they were in the same place, looking at the same thing. But if Eliot has been seeing him as well, and he’s in New York….Implications and possibilities burst like sparks in her mind, bright and fleeting. All she can do is nod.

Eliot smiles, and it transforms him.

 _Oh_ , Alice thinks, almost dazzled, _Oh Q, I think I’m starting to get it_.

“Good. Hold on, I’m looping Julia in, too.”

Julia pops up in the other side of Alice’s screen and gives her a little wave.

“And then there were three,” Eliot drawls, sounding so much like his old self that it actually hurts for a second. “Julia, tell Alice what happened. Alice, listen up because Julia is my _hero_.”

Julia rolls her eyes, but clearly, she isn’t completely immune to Eliot’s weird, near-hysterical giddiness.

“I punched Hades in the mouth.”

“She kicked the shit out of him,” Eliot adds, almost crowing.

“Hades?” Alice asks, scrambling to make sense of this new turn of insanity and mostly getting there. “Like, god of the Underworld Hades?”

Julia makes a face.

“Yeah, uh, he sort of showed up in the living room?”

“Okay,” Alice says faintly.

“Tell her the rest,” Eliot demands.

Julia does.

In another life, Alice would have been jealous of her, mingling with gods and sharing their power, holding that kind of magic inside of herself. But now, she thinks about Everett, how all he was in the end was a small, greedy man, and of Bacchus and Iris and Aengus. She shudders. No, she’s not meant for that.

“Okay, so, what do we know?” Alice uncaps her pen with her teeth, balances a notebook on her lap.

“Julia’s gone goddess on us again.”

“Hades owes Persephone something big, and I’m involved somehow. Also, each of us have been seeing Q in mirrors.”

Alice frowns, thinking. “Actually, I saw him reflected in some mental, too. So it isn’t only mirrors.”

“Does that mean something?” Eliot asks.

“Maybe. Hold on.” She yanks her bag out from under the seat, rummages around until her fingers close around a thin, soft-covered book.

“My Arabic isn’t perfect, but— yes!”

Fogg startles when her voice rises. He glares at her.

“What? Stop being so twitchy; we’re not on the lam.” Alice tries for admonishing and snarky, but she’s too excited and it falls short.

“ _Is that Fogg?_ ” Julia and Eliot’s voices echo from her phone.

Fogg rolls his eyes. “Yes, you all have excellent hearing, well done.”

She hears Eliot take a deep breath. “Alice, what— and I cannot stress this enough— _the fuck_?”

“Sorry, do you want me to tell you what I found, or not? And I think he got fired, I don’t know. He’s been driving.”

“Let’s put a pin in the whole Fogg thing for a second, ok?” Julia says impatiently. “What have you got, Alice?”

“Isthmus.”

“A land bridge between two, larger land masses?”

Alice glances at her phone in time to see Julia’s eyebrows rise. 

“What? I’ve played a lot of bar trivia,” Eliot says, sounding slightly miffed.

“He cheats!” Margo calls from somewhere behind him.

Alice shakes her head. “Technically, yes, that’s one definition, but apparently, it’s used in a couple of different contexts. I found this old book on Islamic mysticism and it mentioned something called _Barzakh_. There are different interpretations, but in general, it’s supposed to be some kind of barrier or place connecting the worlds of the living and the dead. A spiritual isthmus of sorts.”

“You think Q’s trapped there?” Julia asks, looking pale.

“Or somewhere like it,” Alice says. “Somewhere, or something, that connects us, the afterlife, _and_ the mirror world. It would explain why Quentin’s appearing to all three of us, but not only through mirrors. He’s dead and fragmented and reaching out to those closest to him who are still alive.”

Eliot, jaw clenched and determined, asks the next question.

“So, how do we get there?”

Julia turns, says something to someone they can’t see, then looks back at them.

“Actually, guys, I think Kady might be able to help with that.”

 

* * *

II. Julia

* * *

 

> "The world
> 
> gives you
> 
> so much pain
> 
> and here you are
> 
> making gold out of it."

 

Kady took the news of Julia’s return to somewhat godliness with neither surprise nor pomp and circumstance. All she got was a dry “cool” with an accompanying smirk and a bottle of sparkling water tossed at her head. Julia’s exchange with Hades received a much more animated response.

“ _You_ punched a _god_ in the _mouth_?!” She’s ecstatic, grinning at Julia in a way that makes her feel both ridiculous and proud.

“Okay, there’s a lot of emphasis in that sentence that I don’t know what to do with,” she says, reaching to pull out her phone.

“Also, I saw Q in your mirror and I’m betting Eliot’s seen him as well. Alice too, probably.”

Something heavy, and likely glass, shatters on the other side of the kitchen island. Julia looks up. Kady’s gone pale, her mouth presses into a hard, trembling line.

“ _What?_ ”

Julia slowly starts to smile. “Yeah. I think we might still be able to save him."

Later, as Julia recounts her story to Eliot and Alice, the folded washcloth next to Kady’s phone starts ringing.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Kady says and shoves the rectangular piece of cloth up to her ear. And then, “ _Penny?_ ”

Julia turns her face away from her phone for a moment.

“23?” she asks, but one look at Kady’s wide eyes and how she’s bracing herself against the countertop with one, white-knuckled fist, tells her all she needs to know.

Julia hears Eliot ask about how they’re going to find Alice’s spiritual isthmus whatever.

“Actually, guys,” she says slowly, “I think Kady might be able to help with that.”

They wait for Kady to hang up her dish towel in strange, loaded silence. Alice and Eliot know that it's their Penny she’s talking to (Julia isn’t at all ready to think about when exactly she started thinking of Penny 23 as _her_ Penny), but their focus is on Q alone. Julia, though, she watches Kady pace, watches her body grow more and more tense until she’s practically vibrating with grief or anger or something else entirely. She watches as Kady’s shoulders slump, and she leans her forehead against the refrigerator, one hand curled into a fist next to her head, the other still clutching the towel to her ear. She watches as Kady lets out a long, shuddering sigh, says “I know” in a rough, quiet voice, then lets the dish towel drop to the floor in a small, crumpled heap.

When she turns around, her eyes are red-rimmed and hard as steel.

“Yeah, I’ve got something,” she says, sliding onto the barstool next to Julia and leaning forward until their heads knock lightly together and both their faces make it onto the screen.

“Averno.” Kady looks directly at Alice. “Do you know it?”

“Yes. Well, it’s a myth. Kind of. It’s actually a lake in Naples, Italy that’s been mythologized as an entrance to the Underworld.”

“Great. It’s definitely an entrance to somewhere Underworld-like, and we need to find it.”

“Did Penny—.” Eliot starts to ask, but Kady cuts him off.

“He’s….coming by later to tell us more, whatever that means.” She says with a mix of bitterness and longing. “But for now, he told me to ask Alice where she is.” She pauses for a second. “So, Alice, where are you right now?”

Alice blinks. “Oh, um.” She moves away from the camera slightly, peering at something none of them can see. After a moment, she leans back into view smiling, a small, astonished thing.

“Apparently, we just entered Italy, Texas."

 

Julia sits on the couch, legs folded underneath her, and watches Kady pace. When Penny 23 appeared a few minutes ago with Margo and Eliot (and Eliot’s _dog_ for some fucking reason that even he doesn’t seem to understand), then again with Josh, who was still wearing a Fillorian-style apron and mumbling about his condolence-turned-maybe-celebratory muffins, Kady almost jumped out her skin. But they’re all here now, save for Penny 40, and Alice who is currently searching for an entrance to the Underworld that is, somehow fittingly, in Texas.

The tension grows the longer they wait. Eliot can’t sit still, one leg bouncing up and down in a very Q way that makes Julia’s heart hurt. Margo and Josh argue in whispers about something that has Margo looking back at Eliot every couple of seconds, making a face Julia can’t read. Penny stands behind her; if she leaned back just a little, the back of her head would brush his stomach. Kady continues to pace.

Penny appears in the middle of the room. He’s wearing a light-colored suit, which is different, and an irritated expression, which isn’t. Kady takes a sharp breath, like it hurts to breathe.

“Okay, three things. First, I really, _really_ shouldn’t be doing this,” he says, glaring at all of them except Kady, who he doesn’t look at at all. “But...Coldwater’s in some shit, and he doesn’t deserve that, not after the truly epic clusterfuck of a life he was dealt. Second, your plan is shitty, but it's also better than any of the ones I’ve come up with so we’re going with it.”

“Wait, what about Q?” Eliot makes an aborted move towards Penny, but stops himself, clenching his hands at his sides. “Shouldn’t, I don’t know, _being dead_ , keep someone out of trouble?”

“Dude, it’s _Quentin_.” Penny says, like that explains everything. Which, Julia admits, it kinda does. “Look, all I know is when I left him, he was fine. Well, as fine as he could be. All he had to do was take his metrocard, walk through the door, and move on. Bam, Afterlife Express.”

Eliot’s expression shudders, then goes blank. Julia can see his hands shaking.

“But something went wrong, and instead of moving on he’s….lost, or trapped somewhere, I don’t know.”

“Isthmus,” Eliot says, nodding.

“The fuck is an isthmus?” Apparently, being a sharply dressed, Librarian of the month didn’t come with _all_ the answers.

“It’s like a thing that connects two other things, but that’s not the point. Alice thinks Quentin might be trapped there. In some kind of in between place where our world, the afterlife, and the mirror world all connect.” Eliot pauses. “It sounds better when she explains it, to be honest.”

“No, that— that would actually make sense. His soul is lost so it’s reaching for what anchored him in life: Julia, you, and Alice. And since he died so suddenly and violently in the mirror world, being close to it again must have finished fracturing him. So, three pieces of Quentin, searching for the three people who held him to earth. Makes sense.”

“Sure,” Julia says faintly, but she feels Our Lady Underground’s power flare deep in her chest; they’re certainly right about something.

“So what do we do?” Kady asks abruptly. “Alice is looking for this Averno entrance or whatever, but what the fuck are we supposed to do when we get there? Knock, and say pretty fucking please?”

Penny finally looks at her. “God, I’ve really missed you.”

Kady takes a step back. “No. Fuck you, you do not get to do that to me right now.”

“Right. Sorry.” Penny clears his throat, seeming almost baffled by Kady’s, and his own, actions. “Alice will know the entrance when she feels it. As for getting it open and getting Quentin out, well, I’ve only heard of one way and the last time someone tried it, didn’t go so hot.”

“Oh for Christ’s sake, we’re going to have to Orpheus his ass, aren’t we?”

They all turn to look at Margo, who quirks an eyebrow.

“What? Is no one else getting a whole ‘sing your way into the Underworld to rescue a loved one, some terms and conditions do apply’ vibe here?”

Penny smirks. “Someone give the lady a prize.”

Josh groans. “Ok, seriously, why is there _always_ singing?”

“Yeah, I don’t think you’ll be the one doing vocal warm-ups for this one, Hoberman.” Margo says and pats his arm. “I’m thinking it has to be one of our dynamic trio.” She shares a long, unreadable look with Eliot.

“If we’re going to pull all of Q back together, we’re going to need a seriously juiced-up spell,” Julia says slowly.

“Like the spell Alice did to bring Harriet back,” Kady says, stepping again into their little circle.

“Right, so our resident goddess-again supplies the juice, Quinn is our heavy-lifting caster, and El—.”

“Sings a jaunty tune and drags Quentin out of wherever the fuck he is. I got it, thanks.”

Eliot breaks away from them, and stalks to the window and stares out. Julia watches him, her brows furrowed and a dull ache behind her rib cage, but before she, or Margo, can react, Penny holds up his hand.

“I got this one,” he says, voice unusually somber, and joins Eliot at the window.

 

* * *

 III. Eliot

* * *

 

> “What is stronger
> 
> than the human heart
> 
> which shatters over and over
> 
> and still lives.”
> 
>  

Penny walks up to him and Eliot closes his eyes. He doesn’t know what’s wrong with him. Q is— well, not alive, exactly, but also not as dead as previously thought and Eliot should be happy. He should be focused, hell-bent on saving him and nothing else. And for a hot minute, he was. Talking to Julia, bringing in Alice, the three of them throwing around ideas, and hope, united in a way they never have been before. Eliot doesn’t know about being Quentin’s “anchor” or any shit like that, but if he’s learned anything since that terrible fucking bonfire it's that Q is so much more than the glue that held them all together; he’s their heart, and he’s Eliot’s home.

But right now, Eliot is so fucking scared he can barely think. The rest of them, they have a plan, goal, something concrete to complete or find. But Eliot, he’s supposed to walk into something they know nothing about beyond “it probably exists here” with “here” being _a town called Italy in Texas_ and lead the fractured parts of Quentin’s soul back out into the light.

“No offense,” Eliot says to Penny. “But this seems like something I might really fuck up.”

Penny snorts, shrugs a little. “Sure, maybe. Or, counterpoint, you’re the only one that won’t fuck it up.”

Eliot laughs, a twisted, bitter sounding thing. “Hi, sorry, we have met, haven’t we? I’m Eliot, and I am exceptionally good at fucking up the only good things in my life.”

“Spare me your pity spiral, dude. Been there, fucking done that. And you’ve never fucked up loving Coldwater.”

Eliot gives him the side-eye. “Been doing some light reading, have you? Did you like my book? Or would telling me that count as a spoiler? And if you _have_ read my book, then you know that isn’t true.”

_Not when we have a choice, not when we have a choice, not when we have a choice._

Penny lets a beat pass in silence.

“You know, I got promoted recently. Yeah, Secrets Taken to the Grave. Quentin was my first job, actually.”

Eliot looks up, swallows hard past the lump growing in his throat.

“Was he—.” Scared? Upset? _Relieved_?

“He was….tired. Worried about you, and everyone else. I let him watch you all say goodbye, at the bonfire.”

Eliot’s eyes burn. “He was there?”

“Yeah, Eliot, he was there.” Penny’s voice is almost unbearably gentle. “I shouldn’t tell you this, but since I get the feeling he’s not going to be staying dead for much longer anyway, it probably doesn’t matter and fuck it, I’m already in too deep.”

Eliot finally looks at him.

“You were his last secret. How he felt about you….he didn’t want to let it go. He wanted to tell you, he was going to tell you, he just—.”

“Never got the chance.” Eliot says dully as a new, sharper pain takes up residence alongside all the others. Quentin still loved him, had died still loving him. “Yeah. There’s a lot of that going around at the moment.”

“Look, I know this probably doesn’t mean much, but I took care of him. Best that I could.”

Eliot finally turns fully away from the window, from the world spinning rapidly on below them.

“Why are you telling me this? Talking to me like— because we weren’t— Alice was—.”

Penny smiles, a familiar shit-eating grin that has Eliot missing him, this him, with a strong, sudden intensity. Fuck, they have lost _so much._

“Dude, we’ve established that I’ve read your books. Every edition, alternate timelines included.”

“Ah.”

And they leave it at that. They linger in silence for a moment, Eliot watching Penny try and fail not to look at Kady.

“As the resident expert on breaking the heart of the person you love most in the world, I think you should talk to her,” Eliot says, returning Penny’s long, narrow look before walking away and back to Margo’s side. She takes his hand, and the smile he gives her in return doesn’t hurt.

In the next moment, Julia’s phone rings and Penny strides across the room, stopping in front of Kady, who stands, arms crossed and chin raised, waiting.  Penny says something quietly, and Kady, if anything, grows colder.

Eliot watches them, and thinks about Q. What he would do if this didn’t work, if Q stayed dead and Eliot stayed alive. He feels the warmth of Margo’s hand, wrapped in his, holding him steady. He’d survive, he knows that. He’d live in this world that didn’t have Quentin Coldwater in it, but it wouldn’t be his best life, mired in almosts and what ifs and could have beens. He’d forget what it’s like to be brave and to love bravely; he’s always needed Q to remind him of that. It’s a life he doesn’t want, not when he’s come so damn close to something better, something beautiful. To sleepy kisses and morning hair. To fights and compromises and a hard won partnership. To the potential for little feet and bedtime stories and the singular, breathtaking terror of fatherhood. To the beauty of all life. Eliot _wants_ and for the first time, that feeling is stronger than his fear.

“Guys, Alice found it. She found the entrance.” Julia clutches her phone to her chest, and the joy that breaks across her face, filling her eyes, is as beautiful as the dawn after a long, terrible night.

 And that’s my cue,” Penny says, loud enough for them to hear even as his eyes stay locked on Kady’s face. “I’ll run interference on my end, but you guys better make it fast. Go to the entrance, sing the song, find Quentin, and get the fuck out.”

He leans forward until his mouth hovers over Kady’s forehead, the echo of a kiss, and disappears. Kady wipes her eyes, and offers Julia a hand up from the couch.

“You heard him. Let’s move.” If anyone notices that she doesn’t let go of Julia’s hand, they keep it to themselves.

 

Penny 23 travels them to Texas, where Alice is waiting for them, staring up at a large rock wedged into the side of a bluff. Julia’s already filled her in on the new details of their plan, the crazy powerful spell they need her help casting and Eliot’s walk on the Underworld side.

He walks up to her while the rest of them start setting up for the spell.

“That’s a big fucking rock,” he says. “How exactly is singing at it going to help?”

“You have to sing the right song,” she replies, as if that explains everything when it does, in fact, explain nothing.

“Of course. And that is….?”

“I don’t know. You’re the one singing it,” she says, an edge creeping into her voice.

“Alice—.” He starts, but she cuts him off.

“I just need. Need to say this, okay? And I really need you to listen.”

Eliot nods, and tries to brace himself. Alice takes a deep breath.

“Quentin asked me if I wanted to try again. Us, I mean. I said yes.”

Eliot forces himself to look at her, the pain and defiance in her ice blue eyes.

“I know.”

“I wish I hadn’t.”

“What?”

However Eliot imagined this conversation going, it wasn’t like this.

“If I’d known...if I’d known what I know now. All of it. I would have said no. Because then I wouldn’t have spent the last few days I had left with a person I love _so fucking much_ trying to rebuild a half-baked relationship that only ever seemed to end up with both of us hurt and alone. I would have been with Quentin, my first love and my friend. That’s what I want. That’s all I want. Because I don’t deserve to be hurt and alone, and neither does Q.”

Eliot stares at her helplessly. Her eyes are bright and her mouth trembles, but she’s strong, she is so, so strong. Alice Quinn has taken everything the world has thrown at her and given it back twice as hard. She continues to stand long after the point he’d have fallen to his knees. Eliot kind of loves her.

“I’m sorry,” he says because he is. He’s sorry for her pain because he knows what it feels like to have Quentin and to lose him.

“Look.” She sighs, pinches the bridge of her nose beneath her glasses like she can’t believe this is happening either. “All I’m trying to say is….bring him back. And once you do, don’t you dare break his heart.”

Eliot inhales sharply. “When did you—.”

“Realize you were in love with him?” Alice almost smiles. “The first time I saw it was at our coronation. You looked at him the way he used to look at me. To be fair though, Q is kind of one of those guys you can’t help falling in love with a little.”

As soon as she finishes saying the words “can’t help falling in love”, a thundering crack rents the air, shaking the ground beneath their feet. Alice and Eliot whirl around in time to see the middle of the rock start to splinter.

“Oh shit,” Eliot says because of course his life has come to this.

Alice makes a face at him. “Looks like we found your song.”

“Fine, but I’m doing the Reinhart cover.” 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Couple of things:
> 
> 1\. Quotes at the beginning of each section are from Rupi Kaur.  
> 2\. I spent a lot of time on wikipedia pages about the afterlife, different religions versions of it etc, and what's in this chapter is kind of just a mess of the concepts I felt worked best for what I'm trying to do here. That being said, I am by no means an expert in any of this so if something is glaringly offensive please let me know so I can change it.  
> 3\. Final chapter count has gone from 9 to 8 because I moved some shit around and it works better this way, I think.  
> 4\. Yes, Eliot is going to sing "Can't Help Falling in Love" by Haley Reinhart to a rock. No, I do not take constructive criticism. 
> 
> (Thank you for your kind, supportive comments. I love them and I love you.)


	4. Orpheus/Eurydice Modern AU But, Like, Gay

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alice stands inside a circle, Julia accidentally gives career advice, and Eliot sings to a rock.

* * *

 I. Alice

* * *

 

 

> “Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,  
> the world offers itself to your imagination,  
> calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –  
> over and over announcing your place  
> in the family of things.”

 

Alice takes a deep breath and walks away from Eliot, and back to their friends setting up for some of the most ridiculous magic any of them have ever attempted to pull off before. It feels right, somehow, that this is where they’ve all found each other. This desperate, Hail Mary pass to bring Quentin back to them being the same thing that has finally, truly made them friends, not just people bound to each other by pain, magic, and the one person who brought them together again and again.

Kady bickers with Penny as they adjust the large mirror from her apartment, the one Julia saw Quentin in. Margo tries to tilt the rearview mirror that Alice removed from her shitty car in just the right way to flash sunlight in Josh’s eyes, laughing when she succeeds. He throws a grape at her, plucked from the perfectly packed picnic lunches he somehow managed to throw together for all of them. And Julia, who sits in front of the mirror Eliot found Q in and runs her finger along the large crack splitting it apart, spidering the glass. Eliot stands apart with his oddly persistent dog, staring up the side of the bluff, with his head tilted back, dark hair curling under the pale line of his jaw. The dog circles his feet, and whines.

None of this feels real. Not so long ago, she sat with these people around a fire and tried to make Quentin Coldwater’s death okay. It didn’t work out so well. Then, she spent some of the strangest hours of her life driving through the midwest and southwestern United States with Henry Fogg, and now she’s here. In Italy, Texas. Preparing to do serious magic mostly blind and wildly unprepared. She almost smiles; of course this is real.

Alice goes to the middle of their little set up, and takes out her own supplies: a medium-sized candle, a glass prism, and a ball of red string. She uncoils the string, lays out a couple feet of it before stepping back and starting to cast. The string glows, and she brings two fingers on her right hand together sharply, cutting it into seven identical pieces. The pieces flare brightly once, then return to normal. She picks them up.

“Guys, can you come here?” Alice pitches her voice loud enough so Eliot hears her too. He slowly turns away from the rock, and walks towards her. The rest of them gather around, eyeing her curiously.

She holds out her hand with the seven pieces of string.

“Take one and tie it around your wrist. I’ve enchanted the string to tether us together, just in case. Once Eliot opens the entrance and we all start casting, I just, I don’t know what might happen. It’s a lot of different kinds of magic happening in one place, and once Eliot finds Q, the spell will help them find their way back here, to us. I think. It’s just— there is literally no precedent for any of this. With these, at least we’ll be able to keep track of each other if something happens and—.”

“Alice, we get it,” Josh says, cutting off her nervous rambling. “Better to be safe than sorry, am I right?”

The rest of them collectively flinch.

Kady snatches up one of the strings and stalks back to her mirror, muttering something unflattering under her breath as she pushes past Josh.

Josh frowns. “Was it something I said?”

“Just take one, Josh,” Alice says with a sigh.

 

She finishes tying the string around Julia’s wrist, and then she hears it.

Eliot’s voice is soft, barely more than a whisper. He’s back in front of the bluff, a dark, stiff silhouette cut against the rockface. His shoulders are bowed, and he leans heavily on his cane. Margo hovers nearby with an expression of helpless grief on her face.

Eliot’s voice rises, caught on the evening breeze, and he sings about wise men and fools rushing in, about falling in love and some things that are meant to be. His voice is unlike anything she’s ever heard before, both strong and soft, cresting the beautiful high notes and wrapping around the warm low ones. He can’t hide his heart when he sings; it can be heard in every break in his voice.

The rest of them fall silent, through some sort of unspoken understanding that this is a moment that matters, perhaps more than any of them know. Alice feels her heart break a little bit more. Julia slips her hand into hers. Alice glances at her, but Julia is looking at Eliot.

The last note seems to hang in the air, and then the rock breaks open with a thunderous crack, revealing a dark tunnel. The earth shudders and Eliot stumbles, but Margo’s at his side in an instant. When the ground settles, Julia walks over and joins them.

“Hey,” she says quietly. “Do you trust me?”

Eliot falters. He looks dazed, and his eyes are very bright. “Um, at this exact moment, yes?”

“Good, because I think you’re going to need this.”

She reaches out and presses her hand to his abdomen, while Margo watches like an angry, protective hawk. Eliot just looks curious. Julia’s eyes glow and a warm, golden light flares beneath her palm. Eliot gasps. Julia removes her hand.

“What did you do?” he asks, sounding a little shaky and more than a little awed.

Julia shrugs, offers him her usual half-smile. “Healed you. Well, physically, at least. You still need like a solid two weeks of sleep and regular meals.”

“Thank you, Dr. Wicker,” Eliot murmurs, running his hand over his abdomen, then straightening to his full height, shoulders no longer bowed, cane forgotten and Alice remembers, all at once, that he was a king. “Now, onto the encore.”

Margo pulls him around to face her.

“Now, when it’s be brave or be smart, you know which one to choose?”

Eliot almost smiles, ducks his head down so he can brush his lips across her hair.

“I’m being brave this time, Bambi.”

“I know,” she says like it hurts, and yanks him down further so she can kiss his forehead. “Bring him back to us, okay?”

He nods, looks out over all of them until his gaze locks on Alice. She nods, raises her hands in preparation.

Eliot smiles, and disappears into the dark.

 

* * *

II. Julia

* * *

 

 

> _“Have you forgotten who you are? Here is a reminder._
> 
> _You are the bearer of light, of life._
> 
> Do you have any idea of your power?
> 
> _Every time your body bends, the universe yields to you.”_

 

The moment Eliot disappears into the rock, several things start to happen. Penny cuts into his arm and draws sigils on each mirror. Kady, Margo, and Josh stand in front of each one and start to cast. It’s a slightly modified version of a beacon spell, Macgyvered together with Alice’s theories, and several strands of Q’s hair fished from his hairbrush, among other things.

Julia really, really hopes it works. Because she only has one card left and this isn’t the moment to use it. Somehow, she knows that.  

The mirrors start to pulse, rippling in a way she’s never seen before. But Alice doesn’t look worried. She stands in the middle of the little circle they’ve made, glass prism propped on a rock in front of her, white candle at her feet. One hand jerks in short, elegant motions and the candle lights. Then, she starts to cast.

They have no idea how long it will take for Eliot to find Q, all of him, and lead him back to them. They don’t know if the beacon will work, or if Alice’s recombination spell will be enough to pull Q back together. He isn’t just in the mirror world, and retrieving him from there would be difficult enough. This other place, though, the isthmus, they do know that it brushes up against not only the mirror world, but also the afterlife and their world and that’s not nothing.

It’s all that they have. It’s going to work. The beacon will call the parts of Q’s soul back, Alice’s spell will pull him together, and Eliot will lead him home. As for herself, Julia has a couple of things up her sleeves as well. Q wasn’t the only one who could cheat at cards.

“Ah, Julia, I see they’ve started then.” Fogg walks slowly up the hill towards her, somehow looking more out of place here in his neat suit and tie then their mess of mirrors and magic.

“I wondered where you went,” Julia says, and Penny comes to stand next to her, pressing a bandage to the cut on his arm. She wants to heal him, but depending on how long this takes, he’ll need to apply his blood again, and it seems worse to take his pain away just to watch him re-inflict it again.

Instead, she takes his hand.

“Hm, well, someone had to take care of the car and make sure no, ah, civilians wandered into your little….gathering. So I took the liberty.”

“Thanks, I think.” She doesn’t know how she feels about Fogg, exactly. He has made so many mistakes, choices she understands, but still hates, has been with them and against them too many times to count.

“You know,” Fogg says after a long moment, pulling Julia from her thoughts. “I have watched every one of you die many times, in some truly horrific ways. I have watched you mourn each other, taking the time to grieve when you could, moving on when you couldn’t, and always,  _always_ continuing to fight. But never like this. Not in thirty-nine timelines has every single one of you come together like this, in pursuit of one goal. No hidden agendas, no lies or half-truths, or second guesses between you. You are here, with the best and worst parts of yourselves, to bring your friend back from the dead with magic.”

Julia thinks about Q, his flawed, beautiful spirit, and Eliot, stubbornly stitching the broken parts of himself together, and Alice, brilliant and desperate to belong. She raises her chin and looks at Fogg. “We fix what we can.”

“Yes, Julia Wicker, yes, you do. And I do believe you will continue to for many, many years,” he says, and glances over at Margo, Josh, Kady, and Alice, casting with a furious determination that leaves them deaf and blind to what’s happening next to them.

Fogg’s eyes, in the sunlight, seem brighter.

“Yes. Yes, we do what we can,” he says quietly, and brushes off his suit, straightens his tie.

“Tell Alice that I said goodbye, though I imagine we will be seeing each other again soon. To the rest of you, good luck. And,” he pauses, smiles in a way that Julia didn’t know he could. “When you see Mr. Coldwater, tell him it is very, very good to have him back. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think it’s about time I went and fought for my job.”

“I— okay,” Julia says because Fogg is already walking back down the hill, hands in his pockets, and….whistling?

She looks helplessly at Penny, who shrugs.

“Dude’s weird in every timeline. Come on, let’s check on our coven.”

 

An hour passes. Then another. Julia feels when one of the others start to falter. One at a time, she soothes cramps and alleviates fatigue, walking around them again and again, magic burning warmly under her skin, leaping from her fingertips. She should probably be freaked out, or maybe a tiny bit concerned, but this is Persephone’s gift and she’s growing it.

Life vibrates in the air around her, runs through the earth beneath her feet, and she feels  _peace_.

And also a little high, if she’s being entirely honest.

The first time she got high, the herbal kind not the somewhat goddess kind, she and Q were seventeen and already paranoid enough that Q’s dad not only knew that they’d stolen part of his stash, but was just waiting for them to light up to catch them in act. So, it wasn’t the best high she’s ever had, but it certainly was memorable. Once they’d ridden out the paranoia, the two of them watched nature documentaries on Netflix and Q cried about the polar bears.

She misses him with a sudden, fierce longing. She misses what they used to have, even though she knows it's stupid to think they could ever go back to what they were, and that isn’t what she wants, not really. She just— wants him back. She wants him safe and healthy, goofy-smiling and dancing in a stairwell with her. She wants to fight with him and worry about him, she wants to shake him and scream at him for leaving her alone, she wants to cry on his shoulder and feel him hold her. She wants to tell him she is so fucking sorry for not being a better friend. And then she wants to promise to be a better friend.  

She wants to go back to not knowing what the world looks like without him in it.

 

* * *

III. Eliot

* * *

 

 

 

> _“You may my glories and my state depose,_
> 
> _But not my griefs; still am I king of those.”_

 

 

"...They summoned Eurydice and gave her to him, but upon one condition: that he would not look back at her as she followed him, until they had reached the upper world. So the two passed through the great doors of Hades to the path which would take them out of the darkness, climbing up and up. He knew that she must be just behind him, but he longed unutterably to give one glance to make sure. But now they were almost there, the blackness was turning gray; now he had stepped out joyfully into the daylight. Then he turned to her. It was too soon; she was still in the cavern. He saw her in the dim light, and he held out his arms to clasp her; but on the instant she was gone. She had slipped back into the darkness. All he heard was one faint word, 'Farewell.' "

(The Story of Orpheus and Eurydice as read from her phone by Margo Hanson to Eliot Waugh somewhere in Italy, Texas)

 

 

When Eliot steps into the yawning maw of darkness, he really expects to feel  _something_. A sudden drop or rise in temperature, all the hair on the back of his neck rising, or anything else suitably unnerving or otherworldly. Instead, he just keeps on feeling tired and a little irritated that  _the dog is still fucking following him_ , but he’s decided to pick his battles carefully and at the moment, Q is all of them.

He takes a deep breath, wills his eyes to adjust to the dark faster, and walks on.

Eliot never had much patience for silence. It was a favorite weapon of his father, the long, stony silences that sometimes went on for days until Eliot was ready to do  _anything_ for just one member of his family to acknowledge his existence, to remind him that he was a person, not an inconvenient, unwanted son with the audacity to fall a little too far from the straight, toxically masculine tree.  But Dad’s word, or lack thereof, was law and none dared break it, save for Eliot, of course, and look where that got him.

So no, Eliot doesn’t like silence, but it turns out that he likes Quentin quite a lot so here he is anyway. The dog barks somewhere near his foot and runs off. Eliot sighs.

“Sure, yeah, let’s do that.”

He follows the dog, listening for the sharp click of her nails and the occasional bark or growl, keeping one hand to the wall in some vague, unsubstantiated hope that it’ll help him keep his bearings. The ground is slick beneath his boots, almost dangerously smooth. Though his life up to this point has been fortunately devoid of underground tunnel adventures, he’s almost certain most of them don’t feel like polished marble. Gradually, he starts to make out more of his surroundings. The tunnel is wide, at least 20 feet across, and when Eliot looks up to see if it's that high as well, he gets such bad vertigo that he stops walking to lean his forehead against the cool wall for a moment while he catches his breath.

“Fuck,” he whispers, and closes his eyes.

What the fuck is he doing? Q is— here, somewhere, somehow, and Eliot— Eliot is supposed to find him, and what? Save him, bring him home, take his hand and lead him gently back to the light? That’s— not him. He doesn’t save people, and every home he’s ever had he’s helped burn down. The idea that  _Eliot_ is the one leading  _Quentin_ to anything light related is more than laughable, its utterly incomprehensible because Quentin  _is_ light, even when he’s depressed or bitchy or so fucking irritating that Eliot threw a mosaic tile at him once.

Light and love and magic. Fuck,  _magic_. For the first time since coming back from his monster-induced staycation, Eliot feels the spark of it at his fingertips and doesn’t recoil instantly. Instead, he wonders. Magic is the reason he met Quentin, and the reason he lost him (pick a time, any time). Magic has been at the center of his life for every moment that mattered, the best and the worst of them, because—

Magic doesn’t come from talent. It comes from pain.

There are so many reasons why he shouldn’t do what he’s about to do. A shitload of them, to be exact. He doesn’t have any real idea of where he is and even less about what rules, if any, apply here. There’s some connection to the mirror world which decidedly Does Not play well with magic, but then again, it's also connected to the living world, which is down for magic at the moment, and the afterlife, which Eliot knows fuck all about, to be fair. But for the first time since singing his way into this mess, something feels right.

So, Eliot raises his arm, moving his hand sharply, neatly curling his fingers and bringing them up with a flourish. Flames burst into being, dancing above his palm. Nothing explodes. Or collapses. His body doesn’t disintegrate and all his organs are where they’re supposed be. He can, however, see slightly better now. A laugh, unbelieving and slightly breathless, leaves him.

Smooth, dark surfaces surround him on three sides. He looks closer, peering into them and sees shapes, swirls of grey smoke or mist, forming and reforming within, or beyond, the walls. The air is cold and stale, like a dry cellar that’s been locked up tight for too long. If he keeps the flame burning a foot or so in front of him, he can see well enough to pick up his pace, walking farther into the blackness ahead of him.

The path splits in two directions. Because of fucking course it does.

“Any guesses, dog?” Eliot asks the dog, who’s returned to sit on his foot and whine.

The dog doesn’t move.

Eliot takes a deep breath, but before he can make any decisions, the flame in his hand flares a deep, startling purple and the entire left side of his body burns white hot.

“Mother _f_ _ucker_!”

He takes a wild guess and stumbles down the left fork. The burning subsided immediately and his flame returns to a nice, normal orange glow.

“I hate this place. I hate this place  _so hard,_ dog.”

The dog tries to bite Eliot’s shoelace; Eliot walks on.

“It shouldn’t be me,” he says out loud because silence is oppressive and he can’t spend another second alone with his thoughts. So instead, he’s going to talk to the dog. Again.

“Maybe Alice, certainly Julia, for fuck’s sake. She’s his—well, as close as any mere mortal can get to being— Margo. Though, I am a little shaky on her mortality status at the moment. We live in strange times, dog.”

Eliot swallows past the dryness in his throat. An odd, warm gust of air brushes the back of his neck, almost like a breath or a gasp, sudden and sharp.

“Anyways, it should be one of them doing this, not me. I’m just—fuck, I’m just the guy who broke his heart and made him be my friend after. Because I’m selfish and broken and I don’t know how to love anyone without being both.”

This is bullshit. Eliot stops, and rubs at his eyes as they burn with tears or exhaustion or both. Self-pity has never been good for anything but alcoholism and it sure as fuck isn’t going to help Q. 

Naturally, that’s when he feels it.  _Quentin_. Or not him, exactly, but part of him, a reflection or—or a shadow. A first impression.

And what a first impression it had been. Eliot wasn’t even supposed to be the one greeting Brakebill’s newest potential student; Fogg had shoved the card into his hand and said something cryptic and on brand that Eliot hadn’t really paid attention to at the time.  _Quentin Coldwater?_ Pretty hair, a terrible outfit, and an adorable, fidgety stammer.

He should have known then that he was a goner.

Eliot walks on, and Almost But Not Quite Quentin follows. He can’t hear his footsteps or anything tangible, but Eliot knows he’s there in the same way that he knows his life irrevocably and indescribably changed the day Quentin stumbled, confused and wide-eyed, into his orbit.

Eliot really fucking wants to turn around. Instead, he starts to speak.

“You have no idea what you did to me back then, do you? Q, I was ridiculous. There you were, cute and needy and desperate for anything to hold onto in this whole new world you’d found yourself in and I could  _not_ handle it. Ask Bambi, she’d be delighted to tell you all about it. Fuck, can you imagine if I’d actually done something about my stupid crush then? That would have been a shit show. I always wondered though, what we would have been like if I’d gotten there before Alice, before everything went to hell in a moth-eaten handbasket.”

“I remember a lot more about, you know,  _that night_ than I ever let on. I remember you, kissing me, and I remember Margo, whom I adore but God if I didn’t wish then and every day after that it’d been just you and me because— fuck, you were beautiful, Q.”

“I thought you were going to hate me for being High King, that it would be one more thing that I’d taken, that I’d ruined for you. But then you— insisted that I be properly crowned and called me ‘spectacular’ and I. Well.” Eliot stops, and clears his throat because even in the dark, in this place between worlds, and talking to someone who may not even really be here, he is still really fucking bad at this.

But some things are better said in the light, anyways.

Eliot walks on, and allows himself to say things he never did before. He has no idea how much time passes before he feels the presence behind him change. Almost But Not Quite Quentin flares like a growing flame and suddenly, there’s more of him. Another piece of the Q puzzle.

This Q though, this is post-Alice, post-Beast Q, beaten down but not broken, and so fucking determined to fix everything and everyone else that he’ll drive himself into the ground without a second thought. Eliot wants to be his second thought. This is the Q that brings every latent, protective instinct roaring to life, that has Eliot throwing himself in front of battle magic and making reckless promises that everything will be okay even though he knows better, he’s  _always_ known better, but this is the Q with big, doe-eyes and more stubborn than sense and everything that makes Eliot want to  _hold_ and  _heal_ and all the other things he knows he’s terrible at.

“How do you do it, Q?” Eliot asks, forcing himself to keep moving. “You just— believe in things. In people. “ _In me_. “I know I wasn’t there for most of the niffin Alice drama, but God, you just wouldn’t  _stop_. And if— if you felt for me even half of what you felt for her, then—.” Eliot forces his sob into a choked-off laugh. “Then  _I am so fucking sorry_. This is my fault, and you and every person I love has to pay for it, and that’s— fuck, that’s not fair. And life isn’t fair, and neither is death, and just. Fuck that. Fuck that because— because we deserve better. Especially you, Quentin. God, especially you.”

Eliot is the kind of person who turns his anger inwards. He doesn’t yell or break things; he  _consumes_. Every hurt, every slight, every molecule of injustice, he collects somewhere deep inside of himself until it hardens enough to become a weapon he can use. But right now, in this dreary, fucked up, underground limbo all he wants is to take his rage and shatter it against stupid, smooth-glass walls until this whole fucking place collapses in on itself.

He can’t do that though, because he can feel Q behind him, well, most of him, and there is nothing in three fucking worlds/dimensions/whatever that could make him risk Quentin. Not again. So, Eliot packs up his rage and his grief, and walks on.

The path slopes downward and the tunnel narrows until, if he wanted to, Eliot could reach out both arms and touch the sides. He doesn’t do that, though, because that would be weird. The dog no longer runs ahead of him, but sticks close to his ankles. Eliot’s leg muscles burn with exhaustion, but other than that, he’s fine. Julia’s godly touch seems to have done the trick in regards to his previously crippling stomach wound. Time passes, but he doesn’t know how much and he mostly doesn’t care.

 

The last part of Quentin joins them quietly, so quietly, in fact, that it takes Eliot a minute to notice that something has changed. But when he does, it takes every ounce of his self control not to turn around, to assure himself that he’s really there, all of him, because this Q, well, Eliot knows this Q better than he knows anything, anyone else. Better than himself, and better, even, than Margo (though he’ll never tell). Because this is Q in love.

Eliot falls to his knees.

This is Q, throwing himself in front of Alice and almost losing his arm. This is Q, taking a deep breath and kissing Eliot on a blanket under the stars. This is Q, holding Teddy in his arms for the first time, eyes shining so fucking bright Eliot wishes they had some baby-sized shades for the poor kid. This is Q, letting Alice go, letting Eliot go. This is Q, staring up at Eliot and whispering his name in wonder, in disbelief, in hope.  

“ _Quentin_.” Eliot, who has never prayed in his life, whispers in a wild, desperate devotion. He pushes himself to his feet, and he walks  _the fuck_ on.

He feels Q behind him, disjointed slightly, but more or less whole. He doesn’t know if this means Alice’s finished the spell that’s supposed to bind him back together or not, but Eliot’s decided to trust her, and Julia and the rest of them to do their parts so he has to do his.

Up ahead, a light flickers to life suddenly. Small and soft at first, like a candle, but growing rapidly. The light flares, and Quentin’s presence vanishes. Eliot sucks in a harsh breath as the sudden loss lodges in his chest. He could still be there, this could be a trick, if Eliot just turned—

Sharp teeth sink into his calf.

“Mother of  _fuck_ , dog!” Eliot shouts, yanking his leg back. The dog, with her matted brown fur and one eye, looks unimpressed. She snaps her teeth at him one more time, and then runs directly into the light.

Eliot follows, and he doesn’t look back.

He blinks, trying to get used to the sudden brightness, but it doesn’t end up mattering because in the next instant he’s somewhere else entirely.

It’s an….office? Decent sized room, dark wood floors and pristine white walls with tastefully mounted framed monochromatic photographs. A massive, mahogany desk dominates the space and behind it, a man sits arguing with a young woman perched on the side of the desk. She has one one eye and brown, frizzy hair.

“What the fuck.” Eliot says.

The woman turns around and beams at him with a mouthful of sharp, canine teeth.

“Finally,” she says. “I was starting to think I’d never get you here.” She hops down from the desk and walks towards him, holding out her hand.

“I’m Ani.” She jerks her thumb at the man behind her. “He’s Hades. Welcome to the Underworld.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quotes, in order of appearance, from:
> 
> 1\. "Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver  
> 2\. "Goddess" by Lang Leav  
> 3\. Richard II, Act 4, Scene I by, uh, Shakespeare
> 
> Oh, and the bit about Orpheus and Eurydice at the beginning of Eliot's section comes from the version in Edith Hamilton's Mythology. 
> 
> Also, holy fucking shit I don't even want to know how many damn commas are in this chapter. But the answer is too many. And uh, in case anyone didn't figure it out, the dog that's been following Eliot around is Anubis. Mainly because I wanted to add something appropriately wacky.


	5. Peaches & Plums, Motherfucker

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Julia makes a choice, Alice wears pants, and Eliot finally gets to be brave.

* * *

 Julia

* * *

 

 

 

> _“My soul_
> 
> _shattered with the strain_
> 
> _of trying to belong to earth—_
> 
>  
> 
> _What will you do,_
> 
> _when it is your turn in the field with the god?”_

  


The first time Julia went full goddess, Iris wanted her to tune out her friends, to focus outside of their wants and longings, their half-formed prayers. She wasn’t very good at it. Whatever she is now, it isn’t the same, but she can still feel them, like tiny heartbeats alongside her own. It’s how she knows when to step in and ease exhaustion or cramping fingers as Kady, Alice, Margo, and Josh enter their third hour of simultaneous casting.

The air around their little circle is heavy with magic, like an electric storm. Someone must have noticed what they’re doing by now: Brakebills, the remains of the Library, maybe even the McAllisters. None of them have showed up yet though, and since she’d like to keep it that way, Julia steps a little away from the rest of them and strengthens the wards Alice hastily set up when she arrived.

The feeling that creeps up her spine is so familiar that at first she doesn’t realize it’s significance. She focuses on pulling the last threads of the wards tight, grinning as they glow brightly, then settle.

“Hey, Q, look at wh— Oh my god. _Q._ ”

She can feel him again. She would know the strength of his soul anywhere and right now, it’s _back_ , wavering a little, trembling in Q-like fashion, but it’s him and she feels him and some of the sharp shards his loss left her heart in start to stitch back together.

“Julia? You alright?”

Penny steps in front of her, watching her in that soft, curious way of his. She smiles, laughter bubbling up inside her, tears squeezing from the corners of her eyes because _she can feel Q again_.

“It worked,” she says, giddy. “I can feel him, Penny. I can feel Q.”

He frowns a little, clearly confused. “Okay. So, what does that mean?”

Julia looks around at their friends, the strength of their power and determination super-charging the air around them, magic everywhere, dangerous and destructive, beautiful and life-giving. Magic is more than one thing at once, and so, Julia knows now, is she. She feels Q, and Eliot, and knows where they are, knows who they’re facing. More than anything though, she knows its time to play her last card.

“It means,” she says, starting her last round of healing touches. “That I know what I need to do.”

She begins with Josh, sweet and strong and so incredibly willing to be anything the rest of them need him to be. She alleviates his hunger and the ache in his shoulders.

Next, Margo. Feet planted and glaring, sweat gathering on her brow, she holds her world together with both hands and sheer stubbornness. Julia soothes the headache pounding behind her fairy eye.

Then Alice, dangerous and determined, shining on her own. Julia relieves the cramps in her hands and arms, unravels the tight knot of tension between her shoulder blades.

Finally, Kady. Looking at her still makes Julia feel a complicated mess of things. Because Kady is beautiful and deadly, and they are a part of each other now in ways she doesn’t think she’ll ever fully understand. Julia lessons her fatigue, and wishes she could do more for the pain she holds in her heart.

She stops in front of Penny, a man who’s seen her naked and made her feel safe, who she’s kissed and conspired with, who made a choice that was only hers to make. Who she may start to love, one day.

If this works, their future together will be different. She can live with that. Because this is Q and she’s always been the guardian angel of _his_ fucking future and right now, that means making damn sure he gets one.

“I have to go now, Penny,” she says. “Not forever, or anything, don’t look at me like that. Just— for now.”

Penny’s nostrils flare and he looks like he wants to say a lot of things, but he settles for: “I don’t understand.”

“You will. And it’s going to be okay. Besides, you still owe me dinner.” Julia grins, then closes her eyes and reaches for Persephone’s gift.

  


When she opens her eyes again, she’s standing in a tastefully decorated office facing Hades and a young woman she doesn’t recognize.

“ _Julia?_ ” Eliot sounds wrecked, voice hoarse, scrapped from his throat.

She turns around and—

Q is there, just behind Eliot’s shoulder. He’s not whole, exactly; when he shifts slightly, she can see through him. But other than that he’s all Q, her Q. Fidgeting slightly, hoodie sleeves pulled down over his hands and when he drags his gaze away from Eliot, his eyes are huge and red-rimmed, cheeks stained with tears.

“Q,” she whispers, and the thing that had opened up inside of her, feeding on her agony, her grief, and her rage, finally starts to close.

Eliot’s eyes widen and he tries to follow her line of sight—

“No!” Julia shouts and lunges for him.

“For _fuck’s_ sake,” says the unfamiliar woman at the same time, her voice a low growl.

“Anubis, for _the last time_ —.” Hades voice, clearly unhappy.

Julia doesn’t give a shit about their divine squabbling. She grips Eliot’s arm tight, her other hand cups his cheek, keeping his face towards her. Away from Q. Just for a little longer, she begs in her head, let him be strong for just a little longer.

“Look at me, Eliot. Keep looking at me. You can’t turn around, remember?”

“But he’s here.” His voice is so soft, quavering, his eyes huge and shining with tears. He sounds like a child, lost. At the end of his rope. “You said he’s here.”

Julia nods, tears filling her own eyes, spilling down her cheeks. “He is. He is, and we are _so close_ , okay?” She lets go of his arm and brings her other hand up to his face, tilts his head down and goes up on her toes until she can rest her forehead against his brow. “Just—stay with me a little longer. Q needs us.”

Eliot takes a deep shuddering breath, eyes squeezed shut, fingers clenching uselessly in the fabric of Julia’s coat. When he opens his again, they’re clear. She wipes the tears from his face. He tries to smile at her, but it twists into something more like a grimace. She gets that.

Julia squares her shoulders and faces Hades.

“Nice entrance,” he says coolly. “But I don’t remember inviting you to my domain, god-child.”

“Yeah, you didn’t,” Julia says, so far beyond caring about the opinions of gods. “But _she_ did.”

Persephone’s gift burns up the line of her spine, spilling into her throat. Julia’s eyes glow a deep gold, and when she speaks, its not with only her own voice.

“You made me a promise once, Hades.” Persephone speaks, and images flood Julia’s mind.

  


_Standing under a tree, peach blossoms in her hair, a hand in her own, a deep chuckle and soft, warm words._

_“It’s about trust. They must truly believe.”_

 

_“He may have failed, but there will be another.” “Whatever you say, my love.”_

_“Promise me.” “I promise.”_

  


Hades’ mouth thins, but otherwise, he remains composed, untouchable.

“You are not my wife,” he says, spitting out the words like poison.

“No, I’m not. But I hold the same promise. Return Quentin Coldwater and Eliot Waugh to the land of living. They’ve more than fulfilled their end. No deals, not tricks, no bullshit fine print.” Julia sounds more like herself now, but she feels the light burning from her eyes, the strange echo in her voice.

“And what do I get in return?”

“That’s not how a promise works, buddy,” the woman, Anubis apparently, says to Hades in an exaggerated stage whisper.

But Julia smiles. “Rumor has it, you have a couple of vacancies around here.”

“Julia, what are you—.” Hades interrupts before Eliot has a chance to finish. 

“Well, you would know, wouldn’t you?” Hades stands up, walks around his desk, only stops when he’s in front of Julia, close enough to touch. Her right hand curls into a fist at her side.

“Six months,” she says firmly. “Summer and fall, I stay here, in the Underworld. I help where I can, help people heal enough so they _want_ to move on because all of you are, apparently, pretty much shit at that. And you and your weird god friends get to gawk at the new girl. But winter and spring are mine, and I spend them on Earth. With my friends.”

The truth is, Julia _wants_ to be a goddess, she wants to help and heal, to make some things slightly less terrible than they were before and she can do that here. In the Underworld. It’s overflowing with lost souls, and she wants to help them find peace, even if its in death rather than life. She can do that. But she’ll be damned if this path she was started on without her consent will take her away from the people she loves most, from the heart of her.

Hades stares at her, carefully curious and not much else, but she clocks the tightening around his eyes, the almost imperceptible stiffness in his jaw. He’s wavering.

“Alright, this is getting ridiculous.” Anubis jumps down from her perch. “Just say yes. It’s a good deal, and they’ll be _so_ grateful. Grateful mortals are the best kind of mortals.” She pushes past Julia to size up Eliot.

“You know, you were much taller when I was a dog.”

Eliot blinks down at her. He looks dazed and little worse for wear, but his disaffected drawl manages to stay on point. “I truly, madly, deeply do not know what the fuck your deal is, but I would really, really like to go home with Q now.”

“Lover boy?” She shares a quick look with Hades, who nods, not looking away from Julia. “Yeah, I think we can manage that.”

“Why— why are you doing this?” Eliot sounds pained, almost winded like it's taking everything he has not to take her word for it and get out before a godly someone changes their mind. “Why did you help me?”

“I deal in death,” she says after a moment. “Not in being a heartless asshole. And you two, well, you just make such an _interesting_ story. Try not to fuck it up.”

Anubis flashes a canine-sharp smile and backs up until she’s shoulder to shoulder with Hades.

“Julia Wicker,” Hades says and his voice deepens, expands like a night sky intent on swallowing every star. “Our Lady of the Tree. Do we have a deal?”

Julia inhales, slow and strong. She thinks of Kady and Penny, of Alice and Margo and Josh. Of Eliot. Of Q. She smiles, and makes a choice for herself.

“Yes.”

  


* * *

Alice

* * *

 

> _“and I am_
> 
> _out with lanterns, looking for myself.”_

  


Alice is not unfamiliar with intoxication, the giddy thrill of loosened inhibitions, the unnatural, addictive lightness that comes with it, but she has never known a high like the one powerful magic infuses into her bones. She crackles with it, like lightning. But unlike when she was a niffin, Alice controls it, not the other way around.

Her fingers fly. Power flows through her, threads of gold and silver and light wrapping around each mirror, pulling tighter and tighter until—

The spell breaks.

Alice gasps, stumbles into the rock holding her prism, which falls and shatters in a shower of sharp glass. She hears Kady and Margo swear, and forces herself to stand upright and face them.

Kady holds on to Margo’s arm, who’s gripping Josh’s hand tight while Penny hovers behind them. Julia is nowhere to be seen.

“The spell— it didn’t—.” Alice looks at them, exhausted and hopeless and unable to keep either out of her voice. “I’m so sorry— I’ll fix it—.”

“Alice.” Kady stares at something over her shoulder, her face pale and sweaty, her eyes wide. “Turn around.”

But before she can, Alice hears a voice she told herself she’d never hear again.

“Um, guys, what the hell?”

Alice whirls around so fast she almost falls, but she sees him. _She sees him_. Quentin. He stands a few feet in front of the rock, wearing the same soft hoodie and dark jeans he had when he died. She takes a step towards him, then another.

“Quentin.” She breathes out, more whisper than word.

Quentin looks at her, confusion written on his face over the exhaustion and pain and fucking heartbreak she’d been too blind to see before. Too selfish, and caught up in what she wanted, what she needed from him that she never— she didn’t see. But she does now. She really, really does.

When she throws herself into his arms, he catches her, only staggering slightly.

“Oh, uh, hi, Alice,” he says, adorably flustered but going with it as he wraps his arms around her shoulders.

There’ll be time to talk later. So, so much time. For now, she cries into his shoulder and ruins his stupid, soft hoodie.

Then, Kady is there and hooking her arm around Quentin’s neck in what might be considered a headlock except for the kiss she presses to his hair, and the tears in her eyes. Josh pulls him into an exuberant hug, kisses both his cheeks, grinning so hard Alice almost expects him to break in half. Penny circles close, smiling, and claps Quentin on the shoulder, though he looks a little sad at the same time and Alice wonders if she should be more concerned about Julia’s whereabouts, but then again, that woman has always been able to handle her shit.

“Coldwater!” Margo voice cracks through the air like a whip. She stalks up to Quentin, her eyes narrowed into slits, looking angrier than Alice has ever seen her.

The rest of them take a step back.

Margo stops a few inches in front of Quentin, who bites his lip and half-shrugs, offering her a small, soft smile. Her face contorts, bottom lip trembling for a second before the tension she’s been carrying since that fucking bonfire finally snaps and she bursts into tears, throwing herself at him.

“Oof, Margo, ow!” Quentin protests, but hugs her just as tight, burying his face in her hair.

“Shut the fuck up, Q, and take it like a woman. Because I am going to hug the absolute shit out of you, and then I am going to kill you for doing that to us. To _me_.” She pulls back long enough to glare at him again, but her chin trembles dangerously.

“Ok.” Quentin somehow, impossibly, becomes even softer, and tucks a strand of her hair behind her ear. “Ok, Margo, you can kill me later.”

“Good.” Margo buries her face back in his shoulder. “Now hold me like you mean it, Coldwater.”

Alice looks at them, at Kady, Josh, Penny staying close, reaching out to touch Quentin and smiling like she hasn’t seen in a very long time, maybe ever. She tastes the vestiges of magic in the air, breathes it into her lungs, lets her head fall back, face turned to the sun and _laughs_.

Quentin disentangles himself from Margo except for their hands, which stay clasped.

“Margo, where’s—.” Quentin starts to ask with a frown, a hint of panic creeping into his voice.

She doesn’t let him finish, rolling her eyes dramatically even as they fill with fresh tears.

“C’mon, Q, who do you think dragged your ass back into the light. He’s over there, asshole.”

Quentin looks back in the direction of the rock, and stills when he sees him. Eliot, dressed in mourning blacks, and staring with an intensity that makes Alice want to blush, as if she’s stepped into a moment too intimate for words.

“Eliot?”

Quentin says his name like a prayer, a hope, and a promise, and it hurts her heart a little, but beyond that, somewhere deeper, she is content. Because she and Q deserve more than they could ever give each other. She hasn’t figured out what that means for her yet, but that’s okay. She’ll get there. Quentin though, he’s already there, and she could never, ever hate him for that.

  


* * *

Eliot

* * *

 

 

> _“_ And then _._
> 
>  
> 
> _Two little words that hold a world of promise._
> 
>  
> 
>            And then _the light pierced through the dark,_
> 
> _forbidding sky, and the rain stopped falling._
> 
>  
> 
>            And then _I met you.”_

* * *

 

> _“It is untrue that bravery can be measured by a_
> 
> _lack of fear. It takes guts to tremble. It takes_
> 
> _tremble to love.”_

  


After the long, grueling walk that it took to get here, it seems particularly cruel when Hades lazily waves one hand and Eliot is standing back in front of the rock. Eliot jerks around so quickly he almost slams into the rock-face, now sans the gaping maw of a tunnel. There’s nothing behind him but rock.

_No. Quentin. No._

Eliot shatters. He failed. He fucking failed and Q is— Q is really—

Yeah, fuck that and fucking _fuck_ Hades. He’ll go back. He’ll find a way. He’ll tear each fucking world apart by the fucking seams until the gods or the goddamn universe itself gives Quentin back to him.

“Um, guys, what the hell?”

And Eliot’s entire world stops and restarts. Because Q— is here, alive, standing a few feet away from him wearing a dark hoodie and a haircut Eliot will decide later how he feels about because right now Q is here and not dead and hugging Alice and Kady and Josh and Penny and Margo. And Eliot, well Eliot watches them and thinks he could be content watching Q forever as long as he stays safe and happy and _here_. And something deep inside of him, beyond losing magic and Fillory, beyond the monster and all associated apocalypses and assorted traumas, something cracked at the heart of him, left beneath a bloody wedding arch and a thousand things unsaid, that something starts to heal.

Then, Quentin’s turning towards him and—

“Eliot?”

And oh, if his name in Q’s mouth has ever been anything but a weapon that Eliot is fated to throw himself onto again and again.

Quentin stumbles towards him, past Alice and dropping Margo’s hand. He’s unsteady, too pale and his clothes hang looser on his frame than normal. But he’s here and closing the distance between them with that familiar, devastating determination.

Eliot, however, has longer legs and closes it faster. And then Quentin is slamming into him and Eliot is wildly, absurdly grateful for Julia’s impromptu healing sesh because he barely staggers as he catches Q to him and just _holds_. Shaking arms wrap around his waist, squeezing tight while Eliot runs his hands over every part of him he can reach, fingers catching on the ridges in his spine that definitely would not fucking be there if he’d been eating properly until finally settling secure and familiar on the curve of Quentin’s neck.

“Eliot. El, I’m so sorry I wasn’t— I tried but— .” Q’s anxious rambling pierces Eliot to the bone; they’re pressed chest to chest and he can feel every one of Quentin’s rapid, shallow breaths. Back from the dead for less than two minutes and halfway to a panic attack already. _Oh, Q._

“It’s okay, Q, whatever it is, I promise it’s okay. Just. Breathe with me, like that. There. Just like that.” Eliot breathes slowly, steadily and holds Quentin’s head to his chest until each inhale and exhale match.

“You’re okay,” Eliot whispers, giving in and curling over Quentin, burying his face in his air, right above his ear. “You’re okay.”

“How— El, what happened? I don’t understand.” Quentin’s voice, muffled slightly by Eliot’s chest, is shaky and confused. He sounds overwhelmed, clinging to Eliot like he’s terrified one of them will disappear at any moment.

Eliot pulls back enough to cup Q’s face in his hands, stares down into his beautiful, brown eyes, eyes he never thought he’d see again, told himself he could survive without. What incredible lies he’d been feeding himself.

“Q, we’re going to talk about everything, I promise. But I— you were dead and I thought—.” Eliot swallows hard and fails to hide his shaking. “I thought I’d never get to tell you—.”

Q interrupts him because of course he does. “I don’t—.”

Eliot laughs, runs his thumb over Quentin’s bottom lip, effectively silencing him. Quentin stares up at him with those big, gorgeous eyes. Eliot takes a deep breath, smiles a little helplessly, and finally, _finally_ gets to be brave.

“I love you. I’m in love with you. And no matter what happens next, now or in the future or never again, I will always, always choose you. And I am so fucking sorry I let you go a single day thinking that I wouldn’t.”

Q’s breath catches, hitches in his throat and for one, terrifying moment Eliot has absolutely no idea what he’s thinking. Until—

Q smiles, a full, bright thing that yanks Eliot back to simpler times, to red wine in front of a fireplace, to shared cups of coffee and snatched moments of peace, to a scratchy blanket stretched out beneath the stars, a head on his shoulder, and a sleepy voice mumbling about Fillorian constellations.

It’s jarring, realizing how staggeringly capable of happiness they are.

Q opens his mouth to say something and Eliot, embarrassingly, finds himself leaning in closer, as if something as pedestrian as distance could keep him from this. It turns out, however, that something else just might because Q’s body picks this moment, _their_ moment goddammit, to utterly give out on him, and he collapses forward into Eliot’s arms, unconscious.

 

In retrospect, as Margo points out later, it _was_ kind of funny, but in that moment, as Eliot reminds her equally as later, every single one of them freaked out in various, exceeding uncool ways. By the time, Penny has enough to sense to Travel them directly into Brakebill’s infirmary, scaring the _shit_ out of Lipson which, again, will be funny later, Eliot is frazzled and terrified and clutching Q’s unconscious body in his arms and ready _to cut a bitch_.

“You know, when I advised avoiding high stress situations and getting lots of rest, this is emphatically _not_ what I had in mind, Mr. Waugh.” Lipson says tersely, glaring at Eliot over Quentin’s too-still form, looking unbearably small and pale on the gurney.

“Please, just— fix him. _Please_.” Eliot tightens his already white-knuckled grip on Margo’s hand.

Lipson sighs. “Can you at least tell me what’s wrong with him?”

“He died.” Margo says tersely, reaching out and smoothing Q’s hair off his forehead.

“Right. General diagnostics it is then. Now, get out and let me work.”

Eliot steps back approximately five feet, then stops and wraps his arms around himself, eyes locked on Quentin. Lipson doesn’t say a word.

  


Q is going to be fine. Eliot stares at his reflection in the infirmary’s bathroom mirror. His hair is a mess, he looks like he hasn’t slept in days, and he has felt more things in the last 24 hours than he’d ever thought possible and _Q is going to be fine._  

Eliot breathes. He just needs one minute and then he’ll go back to pining regally at Quentin’s bedside.

So, of course, this is exactly when Penny shoves into the restroom after him. Eliot sighs. It really was too much to ask for, wasn’t it?

“Coldwater’s alive and I’m glad, Eliot, I really am. But it's been hours and I need you to tell me what the fuck happened to Julia.”

Eliot wants to help him, but the thing is, whatever happened in the freaky tunnel between worlds and then in the actual Underworld, is fading from his mind fast.

“Look, I’m not really sure what happened. I was more or less out of it, by that point. She said something about a promise and, this is a direct quote, ‘I got this. Ttyl.’ Penny,” Eliot reaches out and grips the other man’s shoulders. For emphasis. “She literally said ‘ttyl’ out loud. I think she’s going to be okay.”

Penny closes his eyes. “That— doesn’t really track, but okay. Fine. She knows what she’s doing. But Jesus, she really is Quentin’s best friend, isn’t she?”

Eliot smiles and it’s half smirk. “Oh yeah. She won’t be gone for long. Now, if you’ll just fuck off for a second, I’ve a bedside to sit vigil at.”

He steps smartly around Penny and out the door, gracefully ignoring any pointed eyerolls aimed his way.

Unfortunately, Eliot’s plan is thwarted in two ways: 1) Alice Quinn is sitting in his chair and 2) Quentin is awake. For a moment, Eliot freezes, his entire body locks up while his treacherous brain starts up the familiar chant of _he’s choosing her, he’s always going to choose her, you know this you know this you know this_ —

Except. Quentin is looking at him with bright, happy eyes, a little unsure and a lot tired, but with a spark that takes Eliot back to their happiest Mosaic days, and Alice is standing, offering him a small smile as she gathers her things, leans over to kiss Q on the forehead, whisper something in his ear that makes him blush. And somehow, Eliot is—intrigued, rather than jealous.

"Goodbye, Alice."

"Goodbye, Quentin."

Alice pauses next to him in the doorway. She looks good, better than she has in a long time, comfortable and confident in dark jeans and a cream colored sweater, a secretive, almost-smirk gracing her lips. She has to stand on her toes to whisper in his ear.

“He woke up asking for you.”

And then, she’s gone and Eliot is left in a room with Quentin and absolutely zero obstacles between them except his own self-destructive, self-protective bullshit. They’ve been here before, and Eliot fucked it up. While he sure doesn’t plan on making the same colossal mistake twice, he’s also fairly certain he’s never been so fucking terrified in his _life_.

But no, that isn’t exactly true. He knows what true terror is, and it looks like a smooth rock set in a bluff in Italy, Texas and his own failure staring back at him, like Quentin, heavy and unmoving in his arms, like ‘he’s dead, El. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’

_Quentin Quentin Quentin,_ his heart takes up its own chant.

“El?” Q, beautiful and _alive,_ says his name hesitantly and suddenly, Eliot forgets all about terror and could-have-beens. Three steps and he’s back at Quentin’s side, reclaiming his chair, and Q’s hand, before he’s entirely aware of any of it. But Quentin, somehow still brave and so impossibly sweet, links their fingers together with a soft sigh without missing a beat.

“Um, hey,” Eliot says.

Quentin smiles, cheeks creasing. “Hey.”

Eliot clears his throat. Quentin’s smile widens, like he knows something Eliot doesn’t.

“How are you feeling?”

“Like I died and came back to life.” Quentin’s incredible lack of tact  is usually something Eliot finds charming, but this time, it makes him flinch and tighten his grip on the hand caught  in his own.

Quentin’s eyes widen. “Shit, Eliot, I’m sorry—I’m okay, really— I didn’t mean—.”

Eliot raises their clasped hands, he can’t tell whose is trembling more, and kisses Quentin’s knuckles, one by one.

“It’s alright. We’re both alright now.”

“It isn’t and we aren’t,” Quentin says, cheeks pinking predictably at Eliot’s casual affection. “But it will be, _we_ will be. And I want to talk about—everything, but I also. Um. Kind of left you hanging back there? In, uh, Alice told me, Texas?”

He says “Texas” the way anyone else would say “Narnia” or “the wonderful wizard of Oz” and Eliot, had he not already been so irrevocably gone for Quentin Coldwater, would have fallen in love with him right then.

“You mean after my dramatic declaration of love? Hmm, maybe a little. But I will say, you have a _very_ distracting swoon.” Eliot teases, mostly to distract himself from his chaotic rabbit-heart, but also a little to see if he can get the pink in Quentin’s cheeks to veer into red.

Quentin rolls his eyes. “Thanks. Should I wait for the joke about all the other men who’ve fallen into your arms?” Q’s tone is light, matching his own, but his eyes, as always, betray him. Fear, vulnerability, longing: all the things he gives Eliot over and over even when he’s so far past deserving even an ounce of the trust Quentin keeps choosing to put in him.

And maybe that’s just what love is: handing someone your broken pieces and trusting them to hold them, handing them back to you as you put yourself together.

“No,” Eliot says softly. “Turns out, you’re the only one that matters.”

Quentin stares at him for a long moment, then sighs, a small, happy smile tugging at his mouth. “That was, like, really fucking romantic, El.”

“Well, you don’t have to sound so _surprised_ about it.”

Quentin manages to keep it together for three, solid seconds before he starts laughing, a bright, genuine sound that brings out his dimples and Eliot is so fucking in love with him.

“I love you,” he says because he wants to, because Q deserves to hear it every goddamn day, because Eliot is through with wasting time on things that don’t matter.

Quentin stops laughing, but his smile lingers.

“I love you too, El, and I want it to be that simple but— .”

“It isn’t.” Eliot sighs. “I know.”

Quentin holds his hand tighter, tips his head back into his pillow so he can stare up at the ceiling.

“I’m not okay, El. And— and I haven’t been for awhile. I— wanted to die. And then I did.” Q’s voice shakes, and Eliot thumbs away the tears that escape from the corner of his eye, then curls his fingers into the hair behind his ear and keeps them there.

“And I have to deal with that. And it's going to be hard and painful and you—.”

“Will be right there fucking next to you,” Eliot says firmly. “Don’t try me, Coldwater.”

Quentin smiles slightly at that. “I know. But the point is, I know we have, like, so much shit to deal with and its important and we’re definitely going to do it, but right now I just really, really want to fall asleep next to you and worry about it in a couple hours.”

“Okay,” Eliot says, already standing and eyeing Q’s predictably small bed strategically. “Budge over, and be prepared to cuddle because this is going to be tight.”

Quentin grins.

 

Somehow, he manages to fold his long frame into the bed alongside Quentin without injuring either of them. Q fits against Eliot’s side like he was made to be there, and Eliot, well, he’s already decided not to fight that anymore.

Quentin tucks his head in the crook of Eliot’s neck, resting on his shoulder and letting out a long, shuddering sigh, fingers lightly tracing the patterned black vest beneath his cheek.

“This what you had in mind?” Eliot asks softly.

Q hums affirmatively, sleep already closing in. Eliot kisses his hair, tilts his head back gently so he can press kisses to his forehead, each fluttering eyelid, and his nose until Quentin surges up and kisses his mouth. Because he’s always been the brave one like that.

 

In a few hours, Margo or one of their other friends will come barging in, or Lipson will come back to fret over Quentin and glare at Eliot, or any other possible distractions will happen and they’ll have to get out of this bed and face the world and all its consequences, but right now, in this moment, they curl into each other and start a different kind of healing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, this got long. Technically, its also the last chapter, but there's an epilogue forthcoming. I've saved the Julia/Q reunion for that because there's a specific pov I wanted to tell it from. 
> 
> Quotes come from:
> 
> 1\. "Persephone the Wanderer" by Louise Glück (which, like, how PERFECT)  
> 2\. Emily Dickinson (one of her letters)  
> 3\. "And Then" by Lang Leave  
> 4\. Andrea Gibson (from twitter, oddly enough)
> 
> Just, thank you all so much for reading this and leaving comments and kudos and everything. Writing this has been cathartic and heartbreaking and exhausting and wonderful all at the same time, and sharing it with you has made it all that much better.


	6. Epilogue: I'll be coming for your love, okay?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> *Quentin Coldwater voice* the power of love, bitches.

* * *

 Quentin

* * *

**Post resurrection, two weeks later.**

 

 

> _“it is a serious thing_
> 
> _just to be alive_
> 
> _on this fresh morning_
> 
> _in this broken world.”_

  


“Hi, Q.”

Julia finally reappears in the middle of the night, startling Quentin so badly he spills hot chocolate on the criminally soft throw he’s been curled under for the better part of an hour. She’s actually the second old friend to come visiting tonight, the first being, of course, the relentless insomnia.

“ _Jules?_ ”

He staggers to his feet, fumbling his half-empty mug onto the side table in his haste to make sure that he hasn’t finally lost his fucking mind.

He hasn’t.

Julia is there, standing a few feet away from him, mouth curling in her half-smile.

“You’re looking pretty good for a dead guy.” She says, trying for a light, teasing tone, but her eyes betray her, overbright and shining with tears.

“I— uh. I really fucking missed you,” Quentin says, voice cracking and Julia’s face crumbles, shatters like glass across the distance between them.

They come together like matching puzzle pieces. Quentin turns his face into her hair, and she rests her head on his shoulder, fingers digging into his back, clutching him hard enough through the thin cotton of his t-shirt to leave marks. Quentin holds her tighter.

“I’m so sorry it took me so long to come see you,” she says after several, long moments, sniffling a little as she pulls out of his arms. “How are you? You look tired.” She’s frowning now, hands touching his face, tucking his hair behind his ears.

“I’m okay, I promise, I’m just— Julia. What happened? Where did you go?” He sounds more desperate than he’d like to, but the last fourteen days have been A Lot, even by their standards.

Quentin doesn’t know remember a lot of what happened after he took the metrocard from Penny and stepped through the doorway he thought would lead to his afterlife. He was pretty wrong about that, turns out. Alice tried to explain it to him, a few days after he’d woken up, something about fragments and a place between worlds, but it mostly just made his head hurt. He remembers flashes though, of Alice, tired and worn-out, leaning against the hood of a car, and Julia, fragile-looking and shouting his name, and Eliot….Eliot talking to him, fighting with Margo, Eliot’s voice bringing him back.

He remembers seeing Julia, standing between them and two gods of death. His best friend is a _badass_.

She smiles, tugs on his hands until he follows, sprawling on the couch with her, legs and arms tangled around each other.

“I have so much to tell you.”

And so she does.

 

Quentin wakes up on the couch alone, a clean throw tucked up to his chin and a pillow under his head. Eliot shoves a cup of coffee under his nose, and Quentin scrambles to sit up, almost falling in his attempt to start inhaling caffeine as soon as possible.

“And a good morning to you too, darling.” Eliot says dryly, and waits for Quentin to get himself situated before joining him on the couch, lying back so his head is in Quentin’s lap. He lights a cigarette and Quentin steals a drag.

“Julia was here last night,” he says after a moment.

“I know. She said hi on her way out.”

Quentin takes a long sip from his mug.

“She’ll come back, right?” He hates how uncertain he sounds, how desperate he is for assurance.

Eliot, though, seems to understand. He reaches up, tugs on one of the longer strands of Quentin’s hair until he meets his eyes.

“For you? Always.”

 

* * *

 

**Several months post-resurrection, one hour before midnight, New Year’s Eve.**

 

 

> _“Tell me, what is it you plan to do_ _  
> _ _with your one wild and precious life?”_

  


“This is a terrible idea.”

“This was _your_ idea!”

“I know that, Margo! I thought you were going to talk me out of it!”

Margo throws up her hands and glares at Quentin, who considers tossing the puppy  currently in his arms at her (gently, of course, Jesus) and just climbing out the window.

“Jesus, fuck me, and Joseph, Q! It’s a fucking dog, not a ring. And even if it was a ring, you’d still be good because Eliot, for reasons I sometimes really fucking question, loves you to a disgusting degree. Second thought though, don’t get any ideas about rings, because he will definitely want to be the one to propose and he’s going to be a nightmare about it so I’d recommend just standing back and letting it happen.”

Quentin sputters, certain his face has gone bright red. “What the _fuck_ , Margo. We’re not— We haven’t even— I mean, _obviously_ I want to, someday— But what are you— why would you—.”

Margo snatches the puppy out of his arms, smacks a kiss to its little nose and fastens the bright red bow to the tiny silver collar around its neck.

“And there we go. One perfect little prince.” She says, sounding supremely proud of herself, sparing an eyeroll for Quentin, whose mouth is still opening and closing rapidly though no sound emerges anymore.

She hands the puppy back to Quentin.

“Seriously, slow that beautiful brain of yours, okay?” Margo smacks his cheek lightly, fondly and somehow, Quentin does feel a little better. “It’s all good, I promise.”

Nevermind. “Oh my god, you told him!”

“I did not! Only a little.”

_“Margo!”_

“I just told him you had a surprise for him, I swear! He one hundred percent thinks it's some kind of kinky sex thing. You have nothing to worry about.”

“Oh my God.” Quentin closes his eyes. The puppy licks his chin.

“I can’t believe you’re letting him name this little guy,” Margo says after a beat, scratching the puppy’s ears.

“It would be a little weird to name the puppy I’m giving him as a gift, Margo.”

“Eh, maybe, but you should know that Eliot named his one and only, thank God, pet fish _Waldorf_.”

“Oh no.”

“Yep. He’s so fucking dumb,” she says happily. “So, you know, good luck with that.” She kisses his cheek, the top of the puppy’s head, and disappears through the door and back to the party.

Quentin groans, and hides his face in the puppy’s soft, soft fur. Rationally, he knows he isn’t off base with this. Eliot wants a dog; it’s not like he’s been subtle. Eliot’s never been subtle about anything in his life. But still. A dog means something, like— like moving in together, which kind of happened accidentally awhile ago when Quentin just sort of _stayed_. But this dog is going to be theirs, something they take care of together, and he’s just. A little nervous.

“Q? Babe, are you in there? Because we’ve got less than an hour until we can finally tell this year to fuck the fuck off and I am not doing that without you.”

Quentin smiles, a little helplessly, and adjusts the puppy in his arms. The puppy, of course, chooses this moment to bark.

The door bangs open immediately. Quentin sighs. He turns around, half-holding out the puppy to Eliot, whose beautiful, kohl-lined eyes widen in a way that would look comical on anyone else, but on him only looks appropriately dramatic.

“Surprise?” Quentin says because it’s now or never, apparently. “I mean, we talked about it awhile ago and I thought. You know.”

Eliot swoops down on both of them, scooping the puppy up, cooing nonsensically, kissing Quentin’s cheek, then his temple in rapid session.

“You got me a puppy! Holy shit, Q, he’s so fucking cute, what the fuck. What’s his name? Oh my God, he needs a name.”

“I’m vetoing Waldorf,” Quentin says immediately, and Eliot looks up sharply, the effect sort of ruined when the puppy immediately whines and paws at his face.

“ _Bambi knew?_ And she didn’t— she let me— how _dare_ —.”

“El, shut up and cuddle the puppy, please.”

 

Everyone leaves, eventually. Turns out, it’s so much harder to get people to leave your home when there’s a puppy involved. By time they drag Margo away from her “god-puppy, thank you fuckers very much”, Quentin’s ready to drop. He takes one look at the mess of their apartment, empty champagne bottles and discarded glasses, the pile of dishes in the sink and decides all of that is a tomorrow problem. God invented cleaning spells for a reason, after all.

Later, when they’re in bed, Eliot stretched out on his back, Quentin curled up against him, the conversation circles back to potential names.

“Ok, no, I got one. Walter.”

“Eliot, no. Do you want our dog to end up selling meth out of a van?”

“....am I allowed to say maybe a little?”

“Jesus.”

“ _I’m_ vetoing that one.”

Eliot’s chest vibrates beneath Quentin’s head as he laughs at his own joke. Quentin shifts up and back until he can see Eliot’s face, the pure, unfiltered joy lighting up his eyes. He wears happiness so goddamn well.

“I love you,” Quentin says, his favorite non sequitur.

Eliot turns that light on him, something soft and fond sneaking in.

“I love you, too. Oh! How about Willard?”

Quentin groans.

They settle on Montgomery, mainly because Quentin was tired and he can shorten it to Monty, which is actually pretty cute and not mortifying. Eliot is thrilled. Monty barks.

 

“I still can’t believe you got me a dog,” Eliot says sometime a few days later, smiling at Quentin, who’s perched on the kitchen counter, like he can’t quite believe his luck.

“You never got rid of those bowls you bought from when, you know.” When ancient Egyptian god followed you home in the form of a stray dog. But, details.

“They were _expensive_.”

“El, they’re plastic.”

“Petsmart is abhorrently overpriced, Quentin!”

“Right, so that’s why you went back and bought half the store?”

Eliot sniffs haughtily, sliding his hands up Quentin’s thighs and stepping between his legs. “Well, excuse me for wanting the best for our furry first born.”

Quentin bursts out laughing. “Yeah, I’d rephrase that last bit a little,” he says, knows that his smile must verge on the ridiculous because Eliot’s looking especially pleased with himself.

Monty barks enthusiastically, and tries to chew on his tail.

“Such a beautiful, simple-minded little fool,” Eliot sighs theatrically.

Quentin kisses him briefly on the mouth, then shoves at  him slightly so he can hop down from the counter, moving around Eliot so he can grab Monty’s leash. He makes it two steps before strong arms wrap around his waist, pull him back, a warm mouth pressing open-mouthed kisses against his neck.

“Mmm, El.” Quentin says weakly, trying to protest and failing miserably. “I gotta take the dog—.”

“He can wait,” Eliot murmurs, biting down gently on his collarbone. That’s all it takes for Quentin to go boneless, let his head fall back on Eliot’s shoulder, baring his neck and the line of his shoulder.

Long, elegant fingers start to play with the button on his pants when they hear it: the unmistakable sound of a puppy peeing on the floor.

Eliot groans.

“Your turn,” they say at the same time.  


“You know,” Quentin says while Eliot performs the cleaning spell. “If we ever decide to have a kid again, it’s going to be like this all the time but so much worse.”

Eliot stills, and Quentin, whose brain loves to catch up to his mouth so delightfully late, wishes with slight hysteria that the ground would hurry up and swallow him whole already. But before Quentin can say anything, do any kind of desperate backpedaling, Eliot turns around and the look on his face stops Quentin cold.

Eliot has a lot of different Quentin looks. Affection, exasperation, lustful, you’re-cute-but-you’re-also-wrong, and so many, many more, but the one he’s giving Quentin now is new. He doesn’t have the words for it. He’s never seen Eliot so vulnerable, flayed open with something like hope or gratitude or maybe even awe. Perhaps a combination of all three.

“You’d want that. With me.” His voice is low and hoarse, as if he’s been swallowing back tears. But his eyes are remarkably clear, dark in their intensity.

“I had that with you. Before.”

“Yes, but—.”

Ah. So it’s one of those things. Quentin gets up and walks over to Eliot. Takes his hand.

“Are you— are you asking me, now that we have a choice—.”

Eliot flinches, and Quentin rests his other hand on his chest soothingly.

“Because Eliot, and I’m only going to say this once so fucking listen please.” He’s definitely going to say it more than once. “I want to do everything with you.”

For a moment, Eliot just stares at him. Quentin gets a split second to think, _oh no I finally broke him_ before Eliot takes his face in his hands and kisses him. It’s a hard, pointed kiss. A kiss with a plan. A kiss that sends sparks searing up Quentin’s spine, has his fingers scrambling for purchase in Eliot’s smooth silk shirt. Eliot kisses him like he means to _consume_ and Quentin lets him. Because Eliot feels things with the whole of him, and right now, he’s shaking, trembling beneath Quentin’s hands, beneath the depth of his feelings and the strength of his terror.

Because they both have things they struggle to carry. But they get to carry them together. And that’s, well, sort of beautiful.

 

_**Fin.** _

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, I cannot recommend writing out of sheer spite enough; it feels INCREDIBLE.
> 
> First things first, the two quotes in this bit come from Mary Oliver: 1) "Invitation" and 2) "The Summer Day". Title of the epilogue comes from goddamn Take On Me. Now allow me to ramble for a hot minute.
> 
> I never expected to write this fic. Multi-chaptered, somewhat plot heavy (by my standards lol) fics are usually something I stay away from; I tend to stick with my fluff and angst one-shots, writing a couple a year depending on my motivation and that’s usually that. But then the season 4 finale happened and, uh, holy fuck. A la Margo, I lost my shit in a big way.
> 
> So I wrote this story as a way to cope and maybe to heal because I needed a place to put my anger and disappointment and heartbreak. I hope that reading it has done something of the same for you. Because stories have power, and it seems like, more and more, the people creating those stories act irresponsibly with that power. I was pretty fucking devastated by the choices The Magicians’ show runners made, but while I was researching for this fic I found a poem that I didn’t end up working into the story but I did still want to share because it’s very Quentin, and very anyone who's ever felt like Quentin.  
> 
> 
> So, yeah. I think it's brave.

**Author's Note:**

> 1.) Title comes from Take On Me and you all fucking know why.
> 
> 2.) All the quotes at the beginning of each part in Chapter One come from the same poem, "October" by Louise Gluck, which everyone should read in its entirety because its devastating and beautiful. 
> 
> 3.) Current and future mistakes are all mine.
> 
> I'm on tumblr processing my emotions [here](http://annelesbonny.tumblr.com/)


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